BlaBlaCar
| Comuto SA
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 2006 |
| Seat |
Paris , France
|
| management | Nicolas Brusson (CEO) |
| Number of employees | approx. 300 (2015) |
| sales | 40 million euros (2014) |
| Branch | Mobility provider |
| Website | www.blablacar.de |
Comuto SA , based in Paris , operates an international online carpooling service under the BlaBlaCar brand . BlaBlaCar operates in a total of 22 countries (Belgium, Brazil, Germany, France, Great Britain, India, Italy, Croatia, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Hungary and Ukraine) and has over 70 million members worldwide. The French long-distance bus operator Ouibus has been part of the company since November 2018 and will also be offering services in Germany under the name BlaBlaBus from summer 2019 .
history
In 2006, Frédéric Mazzella (with Nicolas Brusson and Francis Nappez) founded Comuto SA in Paris with the aim of building a Europe-wide network of carpooling agencies. In the same year, Mazzella took over the French car pool agency Covoiturage.fr founded by Vincent Caron in 2004 . Shortly afterwards, a new version of the website was published, which already included Google Maps functions, GPS coordinate management and the option of specifying preferences for passengers (bringing animals, the ability to smoke, ability to speak or driving style). 2008, was Covoiturage.fr a new Web 2.0 - Community introduced system. Since then, users can also leave opinions, portraits and biographies on the platform . The expansion of the user profiles should lead to a greater mixing of the travel portal and social network .
In 2009, the Spanish version of the car sharing agency was launched under the name Comuto.es , although it was renamed BlaBlaCar.es in 2012 . In 2011 BlaBlaCar expanded to Great Britain, followed in 2012 by Italy, Portugal, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. In the meantime, Covoiturage.fr , meanwhile market leader in France, reached the first million members. In 2012 Accel , ISAI and Cabiedes & Partners invested a total of ten million US dollars in BlaBlaCar. The largest investor, Accel, had previously invested in companies such as Facebook , Spotify and Dropbox . In April 2013 BlaBlaCar started the competition in Germany, at the same time Covoiturage.fr was renamed BlaBlaCar.fr for reasons of consistency . In August 2013, around 80 people worked for the company across countries. The car sharing agency has also been active in Ukraine and Russia since 2014, and BlaBlaCar claims that it had a total of over nine million members this year. On July 2, 2014, the company announced the completion of a EUR 73 million ( US $ 100 million ) capital increase to further finance its international growth, led by Index Ventures and with the participation of existing investors Accel, ISAI and Lead Edge Capital. The company has also been active on the Indian market since January 2015. Two takeovers in March and April of the same year expanded the country spectrum to include Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Mexico. In December 2015, Brazil was announced as the twentieth ridesharing country.
In November 2018, BlaBlaCar took over a majority stake in the long-distance bus operator Ouibus , founded in 2012 by the French state railway SNCF , in order to expand its route network internationally. In 2018, Ouibus was present in ten European countries and transported twelve million passengers. The company held a market share of 40% in France, but made a loss of 35 million euros on sales of 55 million euros. At the same time as the acquisition of Ouibus, SNCF and the historical partners of BlaBlaCar signed a capital increase of 101 million euros, whereby SNCF acquired a stake in BlaBlaCar and acquired a seat on the Board of Directors of Comuto. In June 2019, the company started under the new name BlaBlaBus for the first time in Germany.
Concept and functions
Users can offer other members a ride in their car or search for a ride themselves . With over 65 million registered users, BlaBlaCar is the largest provider of carpooling in Europe .
BlaBlaCar is a sharing economy company that combines the function of a travel search engine with that of a social network. In order to be able to use the BlaBlaCar service, registration on the website is required. Drivers who are planning a car trip can offer their free seats to other members, stating the distance and the price. Interested passengers contact the driver. They then travel together and the passenger pays the driver a share of the costs. BlaBlaCar suggests a price for each passenger. The drivers can change this, even for partial routes. So that the drivers cannot make a profit from their service, the prices per trip are capped.
At BlaBlaCar, all users have a personal user profile. This should help to find suitable drivers or passengers and to be able to better assess the trustworthiness of the members. Members can upload photos of themselves and enter data such as age, musical tastes and other interests. Further settings can be made within the profile, for example how ready the potential passenger is to talk while driving. The willingness to talk is measured in one to three "bubbles" - hence the name. In addition, drivers can describe their car with information about the make and model and with a picture.
In addition to the normal BlaBlaCar website , there has been a version for mobile browsers since 2007 . The end of 2009 was iPhone - App , 2010, the Android app released. These mobile applications, which have been downloaded over five million times, allow access on the go.
BlaBlaCar Germany
The German national organization called Comuto Deutschland GmbH is based in Hamburg .
The different country organizations of BlaBlaCar have different cost models. The offer in Germany was free of charge until August 2016. After that, online payment for passengers was introduced in Germany. The reservation costs incurred ranged from 1 to 6 euros, depending on the route.
In 2018, the fee model was switched to a subscription system in which weekly or monthly packages can be purchased for an unlimited number of trips for 4 or 6 euros. Posting trips is free for drivers. The journey itself can be paid for in cash or online. The driver decides how to pay.
In 2015, BlaBlaCar took over carpooling.com GmbH , which was the operator of the platforms mitfahrgelportun.de and mitfahrzentrale.de . At the end of March 2016, both websites were closed and redirected to BlaBlaCar. Instead of deleting the user data as promised, a database extract was uploaded to Dropbox , from where it was copied by a hacker at the end of October 2016 . The data contained 638,000 account details, 101,000 e-mail addresses and 15,000 mobile phone numbers, but a maximum of one data element per user.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b About us. ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: BlaBlaCar.de , accessed on August 6, 2015.
- ↑ Airbnb 1er hôtelier mondial, Blablacar vaut un cinquième de SNCF… combien pèse l'économie du partage. In: L'Usine Digitale. December 19, 2014, accessed on January 20, 2014 (in French, the text does not make it clear whether it is the 2014 turnover).
- ^ Success Story of Frédéric Mazzella. ( Memento of August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) EYIF. Retrieved August 6, 2014.
- ↑ Claire Bouleau: Blablacar, le rouleau compresseur you covoiturage, débarque en Inde. (No longer available online.) In: challenges.fr. January 14, 2015, archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; accessed on August 11, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Les Echos: BlaBlaCar rachète Ouibus à la SNCF , November 12, 2018, accessed on the same day (French)
- ↑ BlaBlaBus starts operating bus trips in Germany. German Business News , June 24, 2019, accessed June 24, 2019 .
- ↑ tagesschau.de: Flixbus competitor BlaBlaBus will start in 2019. Accessed on March 4, 2019 .
- ↑ BlaBlaCar - free, social and environmentally friendly. In: globalmagazin.com , April 7, 2013, accessed August 6, 2014.
- ↑ Comuto Deutschland GmbH ( Memento from September 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Publication ( Memento from September 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Unternehmerregister.de
- ↑ Oliver Bremer no longer with the company. Retrieved July 22, 2017 .
- ↑ BlaBlaCar: Fee for passengers and investment. In: heise Autos , accessed on July 13, 2016
- ↑ Usage packages - BlaBlaCar blog . Retrieved November 15, 2018
- ↑ BlaBlaCar is now even more flexible - BlaBlaCar . In: BlaBlaCar . February 19, 2018 ( blablacar.de [accessed March 31, 2018]).
- ↑ BlaBlaCar takes over the car pool. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . Retrieved July 30, 2015
- ↑ Important information for former Mitfahrgelektiven.de & Mitfahrzentrale.de users. Comuto Deutschland GmbH, November 29, 2016, accessed on November 29, 2016 .
