Photo: BlaBlaCar
Carpooling and shared travel are becoming a growing phenomenon and BlaBlaCar is a great example of that. The company announced significant recent investments for future development.
BlaBlaCar is consolidating its position on the European shared travel market and begins to expand outside of the European space, as well. With the recent $115 million (€97 million) funding, the French carpooling platform is ready not just to grow, but also to become a catalyst for digitalization in shared travel industry.
BlaBlaCar is a well-known name throughout Europe, where it grew from a simple carpooling community to a shared travel marketplace with 90 million members, from over 20 countries, who share cars or buses. Now, with Otiva J/F AB and FMZ Ventures joining VNV Global as investors, the company will start providing their services in neighboring regions as well.
Another strategic step for the carpooling platform was to acquire Octobus, a Ukrainian company that is the creator of a digital Inventory Management System for buses. Since BlaBlaCar is now growing their business in non-European countries, where most bus operators are still operating offline, they required a customized digital solution for ticket selling.
But the company has even more ambitious goals, with plans to also include trains as means of transportation for shared long-distance travel. Plus, BlaBlaCar intends to double the existing bus network, in just 18 months.
“The crisis has reshuffled the cards of the game in the mobility space, and we see attractive opportunities to accelerate our ambitions to grow our multimodal offer. The funding, which adds to an already strong balance sheet, will help us lead an offensive strategy as we emerge stronger from an unprecedented year of crisis. We were in a good and safe position before this funding, now we are in a great position to take some risks, play offense and dream big”, said Nicolas Brusson, co-founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar.
BlaBlaCar is a well-known name throughout Europe, where it grew from a simple carpooling community to a shared travel marketplace with 90 million members, from over 20 countries, who share cars or buses. Now, with Otiva J/F AB and FMZ Ventures joining VNV Global as investors, the company will start providing their services in neighboring regions as well.
Another strategic step for the carpooling platform was to acquire Octobus, a Ukrainian company that is the creator of a digital Inventory Management System for buses. Since BlaBlaCar is now growing their business in non-European countries, where most bus operators are still operating offline, they required a customized digital solution for ticket selling.
But the company has even more ambitious goals, with plans to also include trains as means of transportation for shared long-distance travel. Plus, BlaBlaCar intends to double the existing bus network, in just 18 months.
“The crisis has reshuffled the cards of the game in the mobility space, and we see attractive opportunities to accelerate our ambitions to grow our multimodal offer. The funding, which adds to an already strong balance sheet, will help us lead an offensive strategy as we emerge stronger from an unprecedented year of crisis. We were in a good and safe position before this funding, now we are in a great position to take some risks, play offense and dream big”, said Nicolas Brusson, co-founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar.
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