BlaBlaCar is an iconic name in the French startup ecosystem. The car-sharing and bus-ticketing company has been around so long that it's hard to consider it a startup anymore. However, BlaBlaCar is a very interesting company today due to its unique trajectory.
What started as a scrappy online community has become a startup that has raised hundreds of millions and reached unicorn status. It then expanded to many countries across several continents, then scaled back its ambitions and started thinking about profitability.
The company announces today that it has secured a €100 million revolving credit facility ($108 million at today's exchange rate). This will give it a new war chest to plan for the future and continue to push for growth – including through acquisitions.
“Debt is a relatively attractive instrument, undiluted, and also very flexible,” Bruson told us. Credit line worth €100 million with several major banks located in France, the United Kingdom and the United States
BlaBlaCar is not paying any interest at the moment because it has not yet tapped its debt line. But Bruson said he plans to use that debt facility to acquire smaller companies. Since many startups are struggling because they cannot raise their next funding round, BlaBlaCar will be able to step in and acquire these small businesses.
Profitable over the last 24 months
Although BlaBlaCar is not a public company, it is slowly accepting the fact that it can share some metrics publicly. In this way, BlaBlaCar can reveal for the first time that it has reached profitability – in fact, it has been profitable since April 2022.
This achievement should come as a huge relief because 2023 has been a challenging year for French startups – unless you're working on AI products, of course.
“The whole business is profitable. “We've been profitable for about two years,” co-founder and CEO Nicolas Brousson told TechCrunch. “2022 was almost the first full year after COVID-19, except maybe for the first two months. We recorded revenues of €195 million. We ended up a little negative for the year, but that was actually because the first quarter was terrible.
“But from the second quarter of 2022 onwards, we were profitable. Then, in 2023, our revenues jumped to over €250 million. So we are seeing just under 30% growth in overall revenues and still being profitable.”
Profit can mean different things to different people. Many companies like to claim that they are profitable even though they talk about earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) – a financial measure that does not take into account the costs associated with the company's assets. Bruson is getting a bit tired of companies that pretend to be profitable but actually lose money every year.
In BlaBlaCar's case, the company has been profitable on an EBITDA basis, but it's also net profitable when you take everything into account — BlaBlaCar doesn't own any cars or buses anyway.
In 2023, 80 million passengers booked a bus or shared car trip on BlaBlaCar. The good news is that there are BlaBlaCar users all over the world, not just France.
“Brazil is bigger than France in terms of number of users. I think India will be bigger than France in terms of number of car trips next year,” Brosson said.
The company hasn't started monetizing its users in India, Brazil, Mexico, or Turkey yet — it doesn't take any cut on carpooling transactions. The booking fees will add gradually, which will also help when it comes to increasing the company's revenue.
One wrinkle is Russia. When the war started in Ukraine, BlaBlaCar had millions of users in Russia. While many technology companies have decided to sell their Russian subsidiaries, BlaBlaCar's Russian activities have been completely separated from the rest of the business, but BlaBlaCar does not plan to sell them. Bruson says this would be counterproductive because it would essentially mean ceding it to a Russia-based owner.
“Today, this represents just under 5% of revenue, so it is very small. It is still part of the group, but it is completely isolated and managed independently… The company has been completely separated from the group. But if you want to sell it, in In the current context, it's like abandoning it.
Add train tickets
In Europe, BlaBlaCar wants to aggregate all road transport methods. In addition to car and bus sharing services, the company plans to add train tickets. Users will be able to purchase tickets sometime in the next year or so.
“The idea for us is to combine it with car sharing. So we will be able to offer train rides as well as car sharing – almost door to door,” Bruson said.
Even if you don't book your next train ride on BlaBlaCar, the company is also experimenting with last-mile car sharing. “In this case, we have a different model for slightly shorter distances. The idea is to connect train stations to your destination. Typically, if you get to a van station, you often need to get to your grandmother's house, your vacation home, or your weekend getaway,” he noted. You have between 10km and 40km to go.
Since there are many BlaBlaCar users already driving in this direction, the company will make contact with these drivers to see if they can pick up a group of people at the train station and drop them off at their destination.
In non-European markets, bus travel represents the biggest opportunity. “The good news for us in these markets is that buses are still a fragmented and disconnected industry,” Bruson said. He pointed out that people spend billions of dollars on bus tickets in India and Brazil, which again indicates that there is room for growth for BlaBlaCar.
