BlablaCar

ECO12 Award Facebook Winner Blablacar

ECO12 Award Facebook Winner Blablacar Photo

BlablaCar Logo

Twitter Pitch

BlablaCar’s ride sharing service solves excess transport capacity by allowing drivers with empty seats to connect to paying passengers.

Company Information

Frederic Mazzella Photo

Elevator Pitch

Comuto, which rebranded itself to BlablaCar for its international expansion, is the owner of ride sharing sites Covoiturage.fr in France, BlablaCar.es in Spain and BlablaCar.com in the UK. With 1.6M members, 800.000 upcoming trips and 1 billion miles shared by its European community, BlablaCar is the most active and fastest growing collaborative consumption company in Europe. The company was founded by Mr Mazzella, Brusson and Nappez in 2006. With more than 80% of all European travel still done by car and an average car only carrying 1.2 people, BlablaCar not only targets a large market but also the largest excess capacity in the transport industry by allowing drivers to rent their empty seats to passengers going the same way. BlablaCar has already enabled a saving of more than 200.000 tons of CO2 by making car trips more efficient. BlablaCar’s product relies on social and safety fixtures to create a trustworthy ride sharing community. This includes member ratings to self-regulate the community, verified mobile numbers, social information about drivers and passengers and secured online payments. BlablaCar’s business model relies on an online booking system, taking a commission on the hundreds of thousands monthly, and a SaaS model, selling ride sharing platforms to local communities and companies wishing to develop ride sharing.

Smart Green Product

BlablaCar connects drivers who have empty seats with paying passengers. Since its launch in 2006, 6 million trips have been shared across Europe, resulting in massive savings for both drivers and passengers. With car ownership costs now exceeding €5.500 per year in Europe, drivers can reduce their motoring costs and passengers can save money on otherwise expensive transport means. The service is based on a trusted community where both drivers and passengers share information about themselves, their car and their travel preferences and are encouraged to rate each other, enabling a transparent and self-regulated community. Users can search, post and book journeys online or via BlablaCar’s mobile app. BlablaCar’s impact on the environment is significant. 200.000 tonnes of CO2 have been saved since launch, helping to minimise greenhouse emissions. This saving is continuously increasing as user numbers expand. Another key fact related to this is BlablaCar’s impact on car occupancy. The community has a 2.7 person/car occupancy rate versus a 1.2 person/car average in Europe. Our occupancy rate is still rising as our community becomes even more efficient. Thanks to BlablaCar, people can connect, save money and help make car journeys more environmentally sustainable.

Milestones

  • Funding: $12.5M
  • Investors: Accel Partners and ISAI
  • Employees: confidential
  • Revenues: confidential
  • Corporate customers: IKEA and many more
  • Milestones: Our 1.6M community has now shared 1 billion miles on the road bringing the average car occupancy rate in our community to 2.7 people against a European average of 1.2 people per car. More than €150M have been saved by our drivers in the process.