Apparently, BlaBlaCar wants to enter public transport services in Poland. Your business model has contributed to connecting users and users who want exactly that other page. BlaBlaCar is a kind of hitchhiking of the 21st century, the equivalent of Uber on long-distance sections. Where did the idea to offer train rides come from?
we are looking, we are looking in the near future, currently in France, let’s use train search and buy train tickets from our application. To the topic we’re working on right now. The booking of train tickets is stored in our platform device, which covers all forms of surface transport over intercity distances. In our application, with just a few clicks, you can book a ride from point A to point B by car and bus.
Now we’re taking the next step. For the time being, we are analyzing the Polish market and we are turning to rail facilitations in France.
When is this service offered?
An increasing channel is obtained for distributing tickets outside of their sales channels. This bodes well for potential cooperation. This is a very ambitious vision of development, which is why we do not yet assume the external end of the launch of such services. This will support a step in the construction of a multimodal platform, which is intended to help with the additional stage of car-free operation. We already connect drivers and routes going in the same direction, but we also have a solution for finding intercity, long-distance bus connections and buying tickets online.
Is there a demand in the market for arranging people to travel to a given location?
Definitely yes. And to a greater than its appearance. Years have passed since our start in Poland and during this period we have built a community that already has over 5 million users. The potential is magnified. Taking France, our home market, where we have 25 million users, as a point of reference, we can see that there is still room for several times more growth.
The year 2022 was correct for us, correct with the record-breaking 2019. They are happy with the results achieved, especially since the first quarter of last year. it was quite complicated, because it was marked by covid restrictions and reduced travel function. The last few months have been a period of several percent increases and I assess positively in 2019.
What about 2020-2021? I suspect that the pandemic destroyed your business, because hardly anyone had a visible one for several hours in the closed space of a car with strangers.
The period of use was very complicated. In the beginning, there was practically no movement. It was also the time when we gave ourselves not to encourage travel. In many countries, including Poland, we have opted for the fees we charged for journeys. However, we did not close the service, the passengers themselves set off with us, whether and when and for how much we chose exactly. In 2020-2021, our app traffic followed the waves of the coronavirus. However, it has been growing rapidly since Q2 2022. Earlier, it has been growing rapidly. One of the drivers turned out to be migration from Ukraine after the outbreak of the war. We see start moving to Ukraine and back. This applies to both buses and carpooling. This part of the traffic in Poland is generated by people from Ukraine. This is the result of the fact that our service was and is very excellent in Ukraine. Currently, this service is still running there and it’s one of the functions of handling transport.
What are the other drivers of growth?
Determining, based on our services, the current common economy, rising inflation, prices. To save money, you should aim for quality. Drivers leave to spread the cost of travel among more people, and passengers choose the cheapest form of travel between towns. Added to this is the problem of transport exclusion. In many places in Poland there are no train or bus connections and our service remains the only alternative. Therefore, year-on-year, we recorded a two-fold increase in shared and bus trips in 2022. In the latter case, we recorded the best period in our history on the Polish market. As part of our platform, we have made several million seats available for distribution and sold several hundred thousand bus tickets.
I look forward to 2023 with great hope. BlaBlaCar solve demanding problems that may be ahead of us – from high prices at the stations created to those related to ecology, check the more people travel by one of the locomotion transports, the smaller the carbon footprint.
Is your business profitable?
We have a sound foundation and a growing number of users, which recently exceeded 5 million. The possibility of financing the company is good. The beginnings, as it happens in all companies that help to enter a new market, focus on investments, building traffic and the scale of operations. Currently, the outward movement is in an external other body and does not require a large investment in its involvement. As I mentioned, as of March 2020, service fees have been suspended to allow users to enjoy travel that has been enabled due to the lockdown. Now we’re back to monetizing these services. In December 2022, we introduced a new booking system with a transactional service. Simple and transparent model.
It means?
The passenger pays a service fee when booking a ride, proportional to the price for the ride by the driver. The service fee helps us operate the platform and build a trusted community.
When it was determined to what level of level, what matrix in France?
This is the goal we are striving for, using in writing that these are completely different sources. in cooperation with our activities under the perspective, they can support joint journeys across the country, e.g. the French pattern. There, the government passed a national plan for shared councils for 2023-2027 worth €150 million. Government institutions have recognized the potential of this solution. And what the statistics say: constant occupancy of the vehicle in long-distance travel up to 1.7 people, and for shared trips – 3.9. Promoting this form of travel on a certain section reduces traffic, reduces traffic jams and CO2 emissions.
What is the support?
These are systemic solutions, cooperating with France or Spain – there they support the cooperatives in the activities of the government. I take, for example, in a franchise people who provide a driver carrying passengers, during a one-off bonus of 100-200 euros. The adopted system has been in operation since January, but the idea is that a common usage platform – like BlaBlaCar – so you sparingly use the glory days. We would like to convince you of this type also in Poland. It is worth looking at the effects of these French solutions. Today, however, it can be said that – thanks to which users can get positive results.
Check if you are lobbying for settings regulations in our country?
We will certainly seek contacts with people responsible for the operation and the environment. Support for shared rides, especially in the current situation in which many Poles find themselves, seems to be a hit concept.
In addition, our solutions support with transport exclusion – they complement the network of bus connections with private cars and facilitate access to the bus system from a smartphone or computer. We offer the possibility to buy tickets from over 200 residents. We conclude contracts with materials, because this market in Poland is highly fragmented. We constantly fill gaps on the communication map of the country, and we help the transport company in building an online sales channel. The fact that 55 percent of us support mobile phones in the fight against the exclusion of transport proves how much we support mobile phones. . The use of “seats” is on routes where there are very small communities, and through our platform we solve the problem of individual access to a transport hub.
And whether to enter the transport market in larger cities? Become a kind of competition for car-sharing and taxis?
In France, research on the use of solutions – BlaBlaCar Daily – is already available for people who commute to work from distant suburbs and the ring of towns adjacent to the metropolis, where there is no other transport for their own car or it is expensive.
Will you start with it in Poland?
Shorter commutes to and from work are what we are seeing – we want to explore this business. Testing in France send us the answer as we send BlaBlaCar Daily to other markets. For these services, we focus on short distance journeys by private cars. We will definitely need the knowledge and support of local authorities.
Olgierd Szyłejko by the Polish branch of the French unicorn (a start-up with a valuation exceeding USD 1 billion) since May 2020. He has been with BlaBlaCar since 2019. As a country manager, he develops ride sharing services and a platform for selling bus tickets on the Vistula River. This 35-year-old was for many years of professional service with an airline service (Wizz Air in Geneva and LOT in Warsaw), where he took care of the development of the network of connections. A graduate of the Warsaw School of Economics and the University of Warsaw. Fan of kitesurfing, skiing, chess and travel.