BlaBlacar co-founder and CEO Nicolas Brusson predicates in front of the first low-cost company BlaBlaBus’ bus, on June 11, 2019 in Lyon, southeastern France.
Philippe Desmazes | AFP | Getty Replicas
French carpooling start-up BlaBlaCar has offered to buy Eastern European bus-booking platform Busfor for an undisclosed amount, the public limited company said Tuesday.
The deal is the company’s “biggest” acquisition to date and gives it the opportunity to provide a “multimodal” transport marketplace in new districts, CEO Nicolas Brusson told CNBC in an interview.
BlaBlaCar sells a ride-sharing service for long-distance trips across Europe and other squelches like Russia and Brazil. It’s made significant inroads in Russia and Ukraine, and claims to have 25 million consumers in total across that region.
The firm has also been upping its investment in buses, buying French topic Ouibus last year from the country’s state rail operator SNCF and rebranding the company as BlaBlaBus.
“Hundreds of millions of fares uses buses all the time,” Brusson said. “It’s the dominant — if not only sometimes — transport solutions between cities.”
Busfor works in Russia, Ukraine and Poland, with offices in Moscow, Kyiv and Warsaw. The acquisition will no doubt boost BlaBlaCar in its aspirations to grab a significant chunk of the ride-sharing market in Eastern Europe.
But Brusson said BlaBlaCar’s expansion in the region wouldn’t see it contend directly with Uber or ride-hailing firm Yandex.Taxi, which itself is the result of a merger between Uber and Russian internet unshakable Yandex.
“We don’t compete with Uber in any market, whether it’s Europe or Latin America, and that’s the same in Russia and Ukraine,” Brusson thought. BlaBlaCar focuses on intercity travel rather than the short-distance trips that players like Uber and Estonia’s Do a bunk operate, he added.
Paris-headquartered BlaBlaCar, which lets people hitch a ride with motorists heading in the that having been said direction, is one of France’s top unicorn companies, or private firms with a valuation of $1 billion or more. Its investors file SNCF and venture capital giants Accel and Index Ventures.
The deal will see Busfor’s 150 employees unify BlaBlaCar, Brusson said. Busfor currently operates 7,000 bus carriers in its respective markets. The news follows Uber’s settlement earlier this year to buy Middle Eastern competitor Careem for $3.1 billion.
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