The story
Founded by Francis Nappez, Frédéric Mazzella and Nicolas Brusson in 2006.1
In December 2003, Frédéric Mazzella wanted to travel from Paris to visit his family in the French countryside for Christmas, but he did not own a car and the trains were fully booked. After his sister made a 150-kilometer detour to collect him, he noticed that most cars going in his direction did not have any passengers. During nights and weekends, he began working on creating a concept to address the issue. In 2006, he bought a website called Covoiturage.fr, French for "carpooling", created in 2004. By September 2008, it was the largest carpool website in France.
In June 2011, it introduced BlaBlaCar.com in the United Kingdom.
In June 2012, an online reservation service was added to Covoiturage.fr. The web service put in place its business model and began to make profits. It was also a way to attract drivers and to reach the critical mass. Between July and November, Comuto expanded to Italy, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium.
In April 2013, BlaBlaCar was launched in Germany. Covoiturage.fr was re-branded BlaBlaCar.fr.
In January 2014, BlaBlaCar was introduced in Ukraine and Russia. As of June 2024 BlaBlaCar is still offering its services in Russia.
In September 2014, the service had 10 million users.
In January 2015, BlaBlaCar expanded to India. The company bought multiple competitors, including Carpooling in Germany, Autohop in Central Europe, and Rides in Mexico, expanding to Latin America.
In April 2017, a long term rental service was offered to the best drivers. It was the result of a partnership with the constructor Opel and ALD Automotive, specializing in long term rental.
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On 2 May 2017, BlaBlaLines, an application for daily carpool, was launched in France.
In 2017, the company closed its offices in India, Turkey and Mexico. Executives said they had spent too much and hired too aggressively in those territories. Overall, the company has become far more diversified in terms of geography. While 75% of its users were in France in 2015, by 2021 the company reported that 80% of its riders were outside of France and 60% were outside of Europe.
In 2021, bus seats represented 20% of all bookings on the BlaBlaCar platform.
From Wikipedia’s article on BlaBlaCar, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4