BlaBlaCar bought the largest Russian competitor

BlaBlaCar, the largest travel companion search service in Russia, will become even larger. The company plans to buy a similar carpooling service, BeepCar, from Mail.Ru Group, according to a press release from Mail.Ru.

Details

• “We are pleased to announce the start of a long-term partnership with BlaBlaCar, during which we will integrate BeepCar into their system. Cooperation will allow us to focus on the development of our ecommerce initiatives, while giving users the opportunity to continue using their favorite carpooling service,” said Boris Dobrodeev, CEO of Mail.Ru Group in Russia.
• The deal also assumes that Mail.Ru will promote the carpooling service on its sites, redirecting users from the BeepCar website to the BlaBlaCar website. In this way, the company will secure advertising revenue while continuing to focus on the development of food delivery services, cross-border trade, classifieds [a resource for ads], the company's website says.
• “The acquisition of BeepCar will allow us to double our activity in Russia and offer an even more reliable carpooling service that meets the needs of millions of Russians for a convenient and efficient long-distance travel solution,” commented BlaBlaCar co-founder and CEO Nicolas Brusson.
• The company did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

Context

• Mail.Ru launched the BeepCar service in 2017. The company's press release states that over the past two years, there has been an active growth of the service in terms of expanding the audience and the number of trips. By the end of 2017, the BeepCar app had 2 million registered users who made 2.5 million trips, according to the company's annual report . At the end of 2017, the number of installations of the application reached 4.7 million, and in the second half of 2018 it exceeded 5 million.
• The French travel companion search service BlaBlaCar has been operating in Russia since 2014. Russia is its largest market: 15 million Russians out of 65 million users worldwide use the service.
• The fact that search services for fellow travelers are thinking about consolidation was previously reported by Kommersant. This decision was due, among other things, to increased competition in the Russian segment. In addition to Mail.Ru and BlaBlaCar, Yandex also recently entered the Russian carpooling market, which launched the Yandex.Putka app in early 2018. So far, it only works in Krasnoyarsk and Rostov-on-Don, as well as in their environs. More than 10,000 users have downloaded it on Google Play. Analysts from Sberbank CIB predict that it is Yandex that can become the leader in the Russian carpooling segment.

According to Sberbank CIB analysts, the carpooling service can become a new generation of public transport.

Liana Faizova