By akademiotoelektronik, 14/10/2022

How Blablacar innovates to become the reference application for shared mobility

The 3 co -founders of Blablacar (From left to right): Nicolas Brusson, Francis Nappez, Frédéric Mazzella.© blablacar

Blablacar continues to evolve, and wishes to become the reference application in shared mobility.The world leader in carpooling is in particular among the prestigious French unicorns, these companies valued at more than a billion dollars.

Today, Nicolas Brusson explains to us how Blablacar has developed over the years and what are now the main issues that are taking shape around shared mobility, entrepreneurship, but also the expectations of users.

Blablacar has just celebrated his 15th birthday.What do you think were key moments, the main stages of Blablacar?

Today, Blablacar brings together more than 100 million members in 22 countries, but developing such a community obviously requires time and energy.We can distinguish three main phases in the history of Blablacar's growth.First of all, we had to build the product and create confidence between people who have never come across before and who will share a trip.

We had the desire not only to become the French carpooling leader very early.While the platform was just starting to take off in France, we had already planned to extend wherever it was possible.This is the second sentence of Blablacar's growth: international expansion.In December 2009, we launched the first version of the platform in Spain, under the Comuto brand.In just 6 years, we have entered 22 different countries: mainly in Europe, but also in immense markets such as Russia, India, Mexico or Brazil.

Concretely, we now offer new solutions to move.By bus first, since in Europe we operate a network of long distance cars and in countries like Russia or Brazil we aggregate thousands of different bus operators who distribute their places on our application.Then on the short distance, where we have launched since 2018 an application dedicated to home-work trips.And in the longer term, we think of distributing the train offer in Europe or starting to offer combinations between all these means of transport.

Technologies and uses have evolved a lot since the launch.How did the company innovate, transformed to respond to these developments?

It is true that 15 years ago, the uses of technology were completely different.In 2006, the iPhone did not yet exist and social networks were only in their infancy.We were almost a little ahead of our time.Fred and Francis - The other two co -founders of Blablacar - had naturally started by developing the web version of what was then called carpooling.Fr.It was not until 2009 to see the first mobile application appear on iOS.

At Blablacar, there is a strong entrepreneurial spirit.You have notably launched the “blablamafia” project within French Tech.Can you tell us more?

The concept of "mafia" in startups was initiated by Paypal in the 2000s and designates the network of entrepreneurs among the former employees of the.

The first time I was exposed to a strong entrepreneurial state of mind was during my first job in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s.It certainly encouraged me to join Fred and Francis in the blablacar adventure.

This involves assuming that Blablacar is probably not a job for life, by looking for talents with entrepreneurial minds, that is to say people who act and take risks.And finally, by sharing the capital of Blablacar with our employees.All this participated in constituting the ideal soil to create a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Over time, as the Blablacar team renewed themselves and the employees changed their jobs or created their business, the blablamafia - as we call it - really started to take shape.More than 30 entrepreneurs make it up today, a third of them are women and 9 startups have raised more than 23 million euros in all.As the founders of Blablacar, we have invested in many of these companies which leads to a virtuous circle for the whole ecosystem.

À quels enjeux principaux est conFronté BlaBlaCar sur son marché ? Y-a-t-il de nouvelles attentes de la part des utilisateurs concernant les services proposés ?

If there is a need that may not be new but consumers express with more requirement today, it is that of simplicity.A traveler must be able to compare all the options and find his ideal journey in just one request, on a single application.The mode of transport only matters little, what matters is that the journey is fast, direct and cheap.

Depuis 2018, nous faisons donc le pari d’étendre l’ofFre de mobilité de BlaBlaCar au-delà du covoiturage en agrégeant des opérateurs de bus, et peut-être demain, de train.This will allow Blablacar to become the reference application for shared mobility, and we are very well positioned to succeed in this bet, because the car remains today the universal connector which allows you to go to any destination.

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