EBITDA<\/a> \u2014\u00a0a financial metric that doesn\u2019t take into consideration the costs associated with a company\u2019s assets. And Brusson is a bit fed up with companies pretending to be profitable and that are actually losing money every year.<\/p>\nIn BlaBlaCar\u2019s case, the company has been profitable on an EBITDA basis, but also generates net profits when you take everything into account \u2014 BlaBlaCar doesn\u2019t own any cars or buses anyway.<\/p>\n
In 2023, 80 million passengers booked a bus or carpool ride on BlaBlaCar. And the good news is that there are BlaBlaCar users all around the world \u2014\u00a0not just France.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrazil is bigger than France in terms of the number of users. And I think that India will be bigger than France for the number of carpool rides next year,\u201d Brusson said.<\/p>\n
The company hasn\u2019t started monetizing its users in India, Brazil, Mexico or Turkey yet \u2014 it doesn\u2019t take any cut on carpooling transactions. It will progressively add booking fees, which will also help when it comes to growing the company\u2019s revenue.<\/p>\n
One wrinkle is Russia. When the war in Ukraine started, BlaBlaCar had millions of users in Russia. While many tech companies decided to sell their Russian subsidiaries, BlaBlaCar\u2019s Russian activities have been completely segregated from the rest of the business but BlaBlaCar doesn\u2019t plan to sell it. Brusson argues this would be counterproductive as it would essentially mean giving it away to a Russia-based owner.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, it represents just under 5% of revenue, so it\u2019s pretty small. It\u2019s still part of the group, but it\u2019s completely isolated and managed independently\u2026 The company is totally carved out from the group. But if you want to sell it, in the current context, it\u2019s like giving it away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adding train tickets<\/h2>\n
In Europe, BlaBlaCar wants to aggregate all ground transportation methods. In addition to carpooling and bus rides, the company plans to add train tickets. Users will be able to buy tickets at some point in the next year or so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea for us is to combine it with carpooling. So we\u2019ll be able to offer journeys with train plus carpooling \u2014 almost door-to-door,\u201d Brusson said.<\/p>\n
Even if you don\u2019t book your next train ride on BlaBlaCar, the company is also experimenting with last-mile carpooling. \u201cIn that case, we have a different model for slightly shorter distances. The idea is to connect train stations with your destination. Typically, if you arrive at Vannes station, you often need to get to your grandmother\u2019s house, your vacation home, your weekend getaway. You still have between 10km and 40km to go,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
As there are already many BlaBlaCar users who are driving in that direction, the company will ping those drivers to see if they can pick up a group of people at the train station and drop them off at their destination.<\/p>\n
In non-European markets, bus rides represent the biggest opportunity. \u201cThe good news for us in these markets is that bus remains a very offline and fragmented industry,\u201d Brusson said. He pointed out people spend billions of dollars on bus tickets in India and Brazil \u2014 suggesting that, once again, there\u2019s room for BlaBlaCar to grow.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BlaBlaCar is an iconic name in the French startup ecosystem. The carpooling and bus ticketing company has been around for so long that it\u2019s hard to consider it a startup anymore. Still, BlaBlaCar is an extremely interesting company today due to its unique trajectory. What started as a scrappy online hitchhiking community became a startup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-87258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}