BlaBlaCar

Last updated

Comuto SA
Company typePrivately held company
Industry transport   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Founded16 September 2006;18 years ago (2006-09-16)
Founders Frédéric Mazzella
Francis Nappez
Nicolas Brusson
Nicolas Deroche
Headquarters
Paris
,
France
Area served
Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, and United Kingdom
Services Carpooling
Revenue€250,000,000 (2023) [1]
Members100 million (2022)
Number of employees
600
Website www.blablacar.com

BlaBlaCar is an online marketplace for carpooling headquartered in Paris. Its website and mobile apps connect drivers and passengers willing to travel together between cities and share the cost of the journey, in exchange for a commission of between 18% and 21%. [2] [3] [4] It also operates BlaBlaBus, an intercity bus service. The platform has 26 million active members and is available Europe and Latin America. [5]

Contents

The service is named for its rating scale for drivers' preferred level of chattiness in the car: "Bla" for not very chatty, "BlaBla" for someone who likes to talk, and "BlaBlaBla" for those who can't keep quiet. [6]

History

In December 2003, Frédéric Mazzella wanted to travel from Paris to visit his family in the French countryside for Christmas but he did not own a car and the trains were fully booked. After his sister made a 150-kilometer detour to collect him, he noticed that most cars going in his direction did not have any passengers. During nights and weekends, he began working on creating a concept to address the issue. In 2006, he bought a website called Covoiturage.fr, French for "carpooling", created in 2004. [6] [7] By September 2008, it was the largest carpool website in France. [7]

In June 2011, it introduced BlaBlaCar.com in the United Kingdom. [8]

In June 2012, an online reservation service was added to Covoiturage.fr. [9] The web service put in place its business model and began to make profits. It was also a way to attract drivers and to reach the critical mass. Between July and November, Comuto expanded to Italy, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium.[ citation needed ]

In April 2013, BlaBlaCar was launched in Germany. [10] Covoiturage.fr was re-branded BlaBlaCar.fr. [11] [12] [13]

In January 2014, BlaBlaCar was introduced in Ukraine and Russia. [14] As of June 2024 BlaBlaCar is still offering its services in Russia. [15] [16]

In September 2014, the service had 10 million users. [17]

In January 2015, BlaBlaCar expanded to India. The company bought multiple competitors, including Carpooling in Germany, [18] Autohop in eastern Europe, and Rides in Mexico, expanding to Latin America. [19]

In April 2017, a long term rental service was offered to the best drivers. [20] It was the result of a partnership with the constructor Opel and ALD Automotive, specializing in long term rental.

On 2 May 2017, BlaBlaLines, an application for daily carpool, was launched in France. [21]

In 2017, the company closed its offices in India, Turkey and Mexico. Executives said they had spent too much and hired too aggressively in those territories. Overall, the company has become far more diversified in terms of geography. While 75% of its users were in France in 2015, by 2021 the company reported that 80% of its riders were outside of France and 60% were outside of Europe. [22]

In 2021, bus seats represented 20% of all bookings on the BlaBlaCar platform. [22]

Acquisition

In April 2021, the company acquired Octobus, a Ukrainian company that develops software for bus operators to manage their finances and ticket sales. [23]

In March 2023, the company acquired Klaxit, a French startup enabling carpools on work commutes. [24] [25]

In November 2018, BlaBlaCar announced the purchase of long-distance coach operator Ouibus from SNCF. As part of the transaction, SNCF became a shareholder in BlaBlaCar. [26] Ouibus was rebranded BlaBlaBus and BlaBlaCar also raised $114 million from SNCF and previous investors. [27] In 2019, BlaBlaCar acquired Russia's largest bus booking platform, Busfor. [28]

In April 2018, the company acquired Less, which launched four months earlier. [29]

Funding

In 2009, the company raised €600,000 from the founders and their friends and family. [6]

In June 2010, Comuto raised €1.25 million from ISAI run by Jean-David Chamboredon. [30] [31]

In January 2012, Comuto raised €7.5 million from Accel Partners, ISAI and Cabiedes & Partners to develop its activities in Europe. [32]

In July 2014, BlaBlaCar raised US$100 million from Index Ventures. [33] [34] In September 2015, the company raised US$200 million, primarily from Insight Venture Partners, in a round that valued the company at $1.6 billion. [35] [36] [37]

In April 2021, BlaBlaCar raised $115 million. [38] [39] [40]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carpool</span> Sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car

Carpooling is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car, and prevents the need for others to have to drive to a location themselves. Carpooling is considered a Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Zimmer</span> Co-founder and president of Lyft

John Zimmer is the co-founder and former president of Lyft, an on-demand transportation company, which he founded with Logan Green in 2012.

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zimride</span> American carpool program

Zimride by Enterprise Holdings was an American carpool program that matched inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It was offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service. The company was founded in May 2007. After the launch of the Lyft app in May 2012 for intra-city rides, the Lyft app rapidly grew and became the focus of the company. Zimride officially renamed as Lyft in May 2013, and the Zimride service was sold to Enterprise Holdings in July 2013. As of July 2013, the service had over 350,000 users and had partnerships with Facebook and Zipcar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turo (company)</span> American peer-to-peer car rental company

Turo Inc. is an American peer-to-peer carsharing company based in San Francisco, United States. The company allows private car owners to rent out their vehicles via an online and mobile interface in four countries and new corporate owners to rent out their cars in France in addition to the four previous countries.

Getaround is an online car sharing or peer-to-peer carsharing service that connects drivers who need to reserve cars with car owners who share their cars in exchange for payment.

carpooling.com was a carpooling service that connected drivers and passengers so they can share a ride. It was Europe's largest carpooling network. In 2015, it was acquired and folded into BlaBlaCar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logan Green</span> American entrepreneur

Logan D. Green is the chairman and former CEO of Lyft, which he co-founded with John Zimmer in 2012. Lyft grew out of Zimride, a rideshare company previously founded by the duo in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sketchfab</span> 3D modeling platform website

Sketchfab is a 3D asset website used to publish, share, discover, buy and sell 3D, VR and AR content. It provides a viewer based on the WebGL and WebXR technologies that allows users to display 3D models on the web, to be viewed on any mobile browser, desktop browser or Virtual Reality headset.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ridesharing company</span> Online vehicle for hire service

A ridesharing company is a company that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire that, unlike taxis, cannot legally be hailed from the street. The vehicles used in ridesharing/ridehailing service are called app-taxis or e-taxis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DigitalOcean</span> American cloud infrastructure provider

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, US, with 15 globally distributed data centers. DigitalOcean provides developers, startups, and SMBs with cloud infrastructure-as-a-service platforms.

fromAtoB.com was an intermodal journey planner and online booking platform for European travel, accessible via a web browser or mobile apps for Android and iOS. All relevant means of transportation such as train, airplane, bus, and carpool could be compared and combined within one trip. The company was founded in 2008, and was based in Berlin with an office in Aachen. Service ended on December 31, 2020 due to loss of revenue because of the COVID-19 pandemic, while AllRail, a trade association, attributes it to lack of real time data provided by European state railways.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunrise Calendar</span> Discontinued calendar application

Sunrise is a discontinued electronic calendar application for mobile and desktop. The service was launched in 2013 by designers Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van. In October 2015, Microsoft announced that they had merged the Sunrise Calendar team into the larger Microsoft Outlook team where they will work closely with the Microsoft Outlook Mobile service.

redBus Online bus ticketing company

redBus is an online bus ticket booking company that provides bus ticket booking through its website and iOS and Android mobile apps. ‘’’RedBus’’’ India is headquartered in Bangalore and works like a hub, acting as a medium for a network of more than 3500 bus operators, across the countries of India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Peru, and Colombia. It claims to have registered over 180 million trips, with a customer base of over 20 million. In 2018, the company achieved a GMV of ₹50 billion, with a 70% share in the Indian online bus ticketing segment.

Lemonade, Inc. is an American insurance company. The company offers renters' insurance, homeowners' insurance, car insurance, pet insurance, and term life insurance in the United States, as well as contents and liability policies in Germany and the Netherlands and renters' insurance in France. The company is based in New York City and has approximately 1.9 million customers. Lemonade does not hire human employees to process claims for customers, instead using artificial intelligence and chatbots to process claims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bolt (company)</span> Peer-to-peer ridesharing, food delivery

Bolt is an Estonian mobility company that offers ride-hailing, micromobility rental, food and grocery delivery, and carsharing services. The company is headquartered in Tallinn and operates in over 500 cities in more than 45 countries in Europe, Africa, Western Asia and Latin America. The company has more than 150 million customers and more than 3 million driver and courier partners. The company has plans for an initial public offering in 2025.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dataiku</span> French machine learning company

Dataiku is an American artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning company which was founded in 2013. In December 2019, Dataiku announced that CapitalG—the late-stage growth venture capital fund financed by Alphabet Inc.—joined Dataiku as an investor and that it had achieved unicorn status. As of 2021, Dataiku is valued at $4.6 billion. Dataiku currently employs more than 1,000 people worldwide between offices in New York, Denver, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Munich, Frankfurt, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, and Dubai.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zify</span> French ridesharing company

Zify is a vehicle for hire and carpool service operating in Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Paris, and Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swvl</span> Ridesharing company based in Dubai

Swvl Holdings Corp. is an Dubai-based provider of tech-enabled mass transit solutions, offering intercity, intracity, B2B and B2G transportation products and services. Swvl operates in 135 cities in 20 countries across Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia. The company went public in March 2022 and is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker SWVL.

Hexa, named eFounders until 2022, is a startup studio created in 2011 in Brussels and Paris, by Thibaud Elzière and Quentin Nickmans. The concept of the company, which initially specialized in software as a service (SaaS), is to start startups by partnering with founders and providing them, at project launch, with the idea, seed money and strategic advice.

References

  1. ↑ "Voilà pourquoi BlaBlaCar refuse de se lancer aux Etats-Unis" (in French). BFMTV. 4 November 2015. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
  2. ↑ Dillet, Romain (30 January 2018). "BlaBlaCar is optimizing its service for small cities and has a new visual identity". TechCrunch .
  3. ↑ Möhlmann, Mareike (22 December 2016). "How people build an unusually large sense of trust in services like Uber and Airbnb". Business Insider .
  4. ↑ SCOTT, MARK (2 July 2016). "BlaBlaCar, a Ride-Sharing Start-Up in Europe, Looks to Expand Its Map" . The New York Times .
  5. ↑ "About Us". BlaBlaCar.
  6. 1 2 3 COWAN, MATT (14 April 2015). "BlaBlaCar has turned ride-sharing into a multi-million-euro business". Wired .
  7. 1 2 "Covoiturage.fr veut faire sauter les freins du partage de voiture" [Covoiturage.fr wants to break the brakes on car sharing]. L'Express (in French). 12 September 2008.
  8. ↑ Varza, Roxanne (29 June 2011). "Need a ride? Carpooling platform Blablacar launches in the UK". TechCrunch .
  9. ↑ Gallet, Ludwig (10 August 2012). "Pourquoi Covoiturage.fr est devenu payant" [Why Covoiturage.fr became paying]. L'Express (in French).
  10. ↑ "Allemagne/Blablacar : Une équipe dédiée sur place" [Germany/Blablacar: A dedicated team on site]. Les Echos (France) (in French). 15 May 2013.
  11. ↑ "Exploratory study of consumer issues in online peer-to-peer platform markets". European Commission . February 2017.
  12. ↑ "Fun & Serious". BlaBlaCar.
  13. ↑ "Covoiturage.fr devient BlaBlaCar" [Covoiturage.fr becomes BlaBlaCar]. BlaBlaCar (in French). Archived from the original on 3 October 2017.
  14. ↑ "BlaBlaCar arrive en Russie et en Ukraine". BlaBlaCar (in French). 21 January 2014. Archived from the original on 29 January 2018.
  15. ↑ Leave Russia https://leave-russia.org/blablacar
  16. ↑ BlaBlaCar website https://support.blablacar.com/hc/en-gb/articles/5838581893149-Where-is-BlaBlaCar-available
  17. ↑ "Covoiturage: Blablacar passe le cap des 10 millions de membres" [Carpooling: Blablacar passes the milestone of 10 million members]. Challenges (in French). 9 September 2014.
  18. ↑ "Blablacar rachète son principal concurrent européen" [Blablacar acquires its main European competitor]. Le Monde (in French). 15 April 2015.
  19. ↑ "BlaBlaCar rides into Mexico!". BlaBlaCar.
  20. ↑ "BlaBlaCar propose des voitures neuves à ses meilleurs chauffeurs" [BlaBlaCar offers new cars at its best]. Le Figaro (in French). 5 April 2017.
  21. ↑ Dillet, Romain (2 May 2017). "BlaBlaCar unveils BlaBlaLines, a new app for daily commutes". TechCrunch .
  22. 1 2 "15 Years Of BlaBlaCar: Nicolas Brusson Talks Global Ambition, Course Corrections, And The Road Ahead". The French Tech Journal. 20 October 2021.
  23. ↑ Antoniuk, Daryna (22 April 2021). "French BlaBlaCar acquires Octobus to digitize local bus operators". Kyiv Post .
  24. ↑ Dillet, Romain (15 March 2023). "BlaBlaCar to acquire Klaxit, a ride-sharing service for daily commutes". TechCrunch .
  25. ↑ CATRON, DEREK (16 March 2023). "BLABLACAR LOOKS TO ACQUIRE KLAXIT, BOOST FRENCH CARPOOLING". PhocusWire.
  26. ↑ "SNCF to sell Ouibus to BlaBlaCar in multimodal partnership". Railway Gazette International . 13 November 2018.
  27. ↑ O'Brien, Chris (12 November 2018). "BlaBlaCar buys French bus service, raises $114 million". VentureBeat .
  28. ↑ O'Brien, Chris (24 September 2019). "BlaBlaCar to acquire Busfor amid European mobility upheaval". VentureBeat .
  29. ↑ Sawers, Paul (27 April 2018). "BlaBlaCar acquires French urban carpooling startup Less". VentureBeat .
  30. ↑ Guerrier, Philippe (15 June 2010). "Le fonds ISAI croit au potentiel de Covoiturage.fr" [The ISAI fund believes in the potential of Covoiturage.fr]. ITespresso.fr (in French).
  31. ↑ "Vanity :( Sanity :Reality :)". BlaBlaCar.
  32. ↑ Moreau, Marion (17 January 2012). "[Exclu] Covoiturage.fr lève 7,5 millions d'euros" [[Excluded] Covoiturage.fr raises 7.5 million euros]. FrenchWeb.fr (in French).
  33. ↑ "BlaBlaCar lève 100 millions de dollars pour devenir le leader mondial du covoiturage" (in French). 2 July 2014.
  34. ↑ Dillet, Romain (1 July 2014). "BlaBlaCar Raises A Massive $100 Million Round To Create A Global Long Distance Ride-Sharing Network". TechCrunch .
  35. ↑ Scott, Mark (16 September 2015). "BlaBlaCar, a French Ride-Sharing Start-Up, Is Valued at $1.6 Billion" . The New York Times .
  36. ↑ Dillet, Romain (8 September 2015). "BlaBlaCar Is Raising $160 Million From Insight, Valuing Ride-Sharing Startup At $1.2 Billion". TechCrunch .
  37. ↑ "Nouvelle levée de fonds de 200 millions de dollars de BlaBlaCar" [New fundraising of $200 million from BlaBlaCar]. L'Usine nouvelle (in French). 16 September 2015.
  38. ↑ "BlaBlaCar announces a $115M funding to boost its growth ambitions" (Press release). BlaBlaCar. 20 April 2021.
  39. ↑ Menze, Jill (20 April 2021). "BlaBlaCar raises $115M to expand carpool and bus services". Phocuswire.
  40. ↑ O'Neill, Sean (21 April 2021). "Startup BlaBlaCar Raises $115 Million for Long-Distance Carpooling and Bus Travel". Skift .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.