Blablacar drives off with €101M in funding, plans intermodal transport platform

BlaBlaCar, a long-distance carpooling service, has raised €101 million in funding from French rail operator SNCF and existing investors.

Both companies are looking at building an intermodal travel service in France, taking in carpooling, bus services and rail travel.

At the same time, Blablacar is looking to widen services offered on its platform through an offer to acquire bus operator Ouibus, a subsidiary of SNCF.

According to a statement, Ouibus connects 300 large cities in France and Europe and gives BlaBlacar the opportunity to further its aim of becoming a marketplace for intercity road travel.

BlaBlacar would also look to open up the platform to other bus partners and operators across Europe and enable it to cater for different travel requirements.

This would be BlaBlaCar’s second acquisition this year after it announced the acquisition of Russia-based carpooling platform BeepCar in June.

The statement also says that Blablacar has built up a community of 65 million members and helped 50 million passengers get around since August 2017.

According to Nicolas Brusson, co-founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar, the collaboration with SNCF will “be a promising turning point in the development of intermodal and door-to-door mobility.”

Guillaume Pepy, president of SNCF, adds that the company needs to extend its offering beyond trains in order to sell more rail travel: 

“We need to be able to offer our travellers the possibility to go from departure point to destination, by combining sustainable modes of transport with a railway backbone.”