BlaBlaCar is often named as one of the most tangible examples that the French tech ecosystem has been doing well. The French startup is the global leader for long-distance ridesharing and is worth around $1.5 billion (\u20ac1.4 billion).<\/p>\n
And just like other big tech companies, BlaBlaCar<\/a> recently faced some challenges and had to define a new strategy for the coming years. In a surprisingly candid interview, BlaBlaCar co-founder and CEO Nicolas Brusson looked back at the past few months and shared everything.<\/p>\n In 2014 and 2015, BlaBlaCar grew massively. All the news coming out of the company were about new international markets and additional funding rounds. In just a couple of years, the startup acquired smaller competitors and launched a dozen new markets. And it raised around $300 million \u2014 a comfortable war chest.<\/p>\n But it turns out that not every country needs BlaBlaCar. The startup has avoided the U.S. for years, saying that gas is cheaper there, cities are too far from each other and too big to conveniently pick up and drop off people.<\/p>\n Russia is now BlaBlaCar\u2019s first market when it comes to rides per month \u2014 it is bigger than France<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n As Capital<\/a> first reported, some other bets have not paid off at all. The company had to shut down three offices \u2014 India, Turkey and Mexico. You can still book rides on those local websites, but the services have been on autopilot for a while without any local staff or advertising.<\/p>\n BlaBlaCar\u2019s main markets have also slowed down. For instance, France isn\u2019t growing as much as it used to.<\/p>\n \u201cWestern European markets are relatively similar,\u201d Brusson said. \u201cExcept in the U.K. where it never really took off. It sort of works but it\u2019s nothing exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n But other countries have shown more positive signs, such as Russia, Eastern Europe and Brazil.<\/p>\n Russia is now BlaBlaCar\u2019s first market when it comes to rides per month \u2014 it is bigger than France. And it\u2019s still growing rapidly. So BlaBlaCar is going to bet it all on Russia and Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n First, the company raised a strategic round of funding from a Russian investor at the same \u20ac1.4 billion valuation last year. Brusson confirmed that the company got \u20ac21 million from Baring Vostok<\/a>, a VC firm that invested in Yandex quite early. But Baring Vostok got more than \u20ac21 million worth of shares.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of secondary market activity around this funding. They invested \u20ac80 million in total to buy back the shares of some of the very early investors before ISAI<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Second, BlaBlaCar is going to spend time fine-tuning its product offering for the Russian market and Russian regulation. It has to feel like a Russian product for its local community.<\/p>\nThe markets<\/h2>\n
\n
The Russian funding<\/h2>\n