How to Launch A Profitable BlaBlaCar Clone App?

Technology has positively impacted almost every sphere of our lives, and some of them have been impacted in more than one dimension. One of the best examples of how technology has transformed the landscape of an entire industry is that of travel and transportation.

We are not talking about the simplification of the ticketing process, but the entire mechanism of moving from one place to another. The starting point of this transformation can be attributed to the start-up from San Francisco that has not gone on to establish its presence in more than 78 countries and in more than 600 cities on the planet. Yes, you’re right. We are talking about Uber.

While Uber and similar applications have addressed the concerns regarding ride-hailing and on-demand transportation, there is one segment that needed to be addressed as effectively as the rest of them, and it was ridesharing. The challenges in local ridesharing and daily commuting was effectively taken care of by the extensions of Uber-like apps, for example, UberPool, and Ola Share.

It was, however, the intercity ridesharing, popularly known as carpooling, that still had to undergo the transformation, until BlaBlaCar stepped in.

A bit about BlaBlaCar 

BlaBlaCar was founded in France 14 years ago. It is funny that the name of the service can be attributed to the talkativeness of the drivers. It was not until about a year after the business did see a huge upsurge in its usage. It can be attributed to the train strike of France in 2007. BlaBlaCar had become so dependable that it was looked at as the only option to travel between cities in an affordable fashion.

The second big break for BlaBlaCar was during 2009 when a glacial volcano in Iceland elected grounding all the flights over Europe. It’s popularity in Europe and Latin America can be felt to this day. It has its operations in a lot of countries all over Europe, and even in Turkey, Serbia, Mexico, Brazil, and India. They had stated that they would give the United States a pass because the cities were too big and the cost of fuel was cheap.

The business model and the metrics

BlaBlaCar is not, by definition, an on-demand transportation app. It is just a carpooling facilitation app, and it only enables the sharing of fuel costs. This has a few implications.

A person who requests a ride will have to tag along with the person who offers the ride. They do not have any playing on the pick-up point and the dropping point. In essence, they are just joining with the person who offers the ride to a specific location. The person who offers the ride is not liable to pick up the one who requests the ride.

BlaBlaCar makes its profit by taking a commission from the shared fuel cost. The person who avails this service can make a payment directly to the app by using digital payment methods. BlaBlaCar deducts its commissions and pays out the rest to the person who offers the ride.

Today, BlaBlaCar has over 15 million users globally, and the app has been downloaded over 30 million times. It operates in about 22 countries, and the brand has about 4 million fans on Facebook. In 2015, there were about 70 million members and the company netted a revenue of about €80 million.

BlaBlaCar has even expanded into the territory of buses, heralding BlaBlaBus. This was made possible by the acquisition of Ouibus from the French national railway corporation. This service specializes in long-distance coach operation.

Over the course of many years since its inception, BlaBlaCar has raised multiple rounds of funding, and in 2015, the company was valued at a staggering $1.6 billion. 

The market

The growing acceptance of travel and tourism as a hobby globally, the breaking of social barriers for interaction, the general increase in the affordability of four-wheelers, and above everything, the rising dominance of the sharing economy have contributed to an immense increase in the magnitude of carpooling in the recent years.

The COVID-19, however, has brought the entire transportation, travel, and tourism industry to a screeching standstill. Although it might take some time for the industry to recover, it has already started showing signs of recuperating. It is quite possible that the industry might grow bigger and better than ever before in less than another year and a half.

The travel industry is expected to register a CAGR of 13.3% between 2019 and 2026, putting the projection at $1.6 trillion worth by 2026. Paddling to this, the transportation industry has also been drawing at about 10.6% between 2020 and 2025. This puts the value of the industry at about $156 billion by 2025. Both these industries can be considered as valid indicators of how the carpooling industry will perform over the next half a decade.

BlaBlaCar might be the undisputed leader of this space, but it does not mean that there is no room for new players to be accommodated. In fact, the market is wide open that new players can not only come in but also establish a strong avenue of profitability.

Building a business like BlaBlaCar

With the advent of fast Internet, the availability of GPS technology on every smartphone, and the enablement of an online identity through a personal profile, almost every service can be requested by using a mobile app.

A carpooling business like BlaBlaCar can also follow the same business model which is quite different from the way it started. One of the key ingredients in building such a business is an app like BlaBlaCar.

To build an app like BlaBlaCar, you can consider hiring your own development team. You can also hire an app development company. Although both the methods mentioned above might seem simple and straightforward, they are quite challenging in terms of both the cost and the time taken to build the app. In all of this, there is not even an assurance that the end product will be free from all glitches that will interfere with the basic functionality of the app.

Alternatively, you can go for a BlaBlaCar clone app. BlaBlaCar clone script is available as a white-label solution and is easy to customize. Going for a white label BlaBlaCar Clone app does away with all the disadvantages it is associated with the other two methods of development. It also paves way for someone with zero technical expertise to start a carpooling business.

The essential features

Even if you were to go for a white label solution, it is essential to know the features.

• The app should facilitate an easy login by using the email address or phone number or social media/legacy login credentials.
• The people who need to request a ride should be able to find one without much hassle. If need be, they should be able to book a ride with two or three steps but using the “ride now“ option.
• They should also be able to schedule a ride for later. This can come in handy for scheduled trips.
• They should be able to contact the driver by chatting right within the application or by calling them over the phone. It can help in better coordination.
• The GPS technology should come to the forefront in updating the requester on the status of the car owner in real-time. This should work to give the ETA for the convenience of the requester.
• The requestor should also be given estimates of the trip based on the pickup and drop location.
• The calculation of payments should be made simple and convenient. It should also be able to take into consideration one person and multiple people sharing a ride.
• The payment needs to be fulfilled without much hassle. The app should have a versatile payment gateway that accepts multiple payment instruments.
• The app should support regional languages based on the geography that is being targeted for your business.
• There should be a review and rating system that can help in gauging the driver in terms of their driving skills and professionalism.
• There should also be an SOS button that can alert not only the app business but also the local police in case of any emergency.

Conclusion

The profitability and dependability of a carpooling app as a business has already been established through the success of BlaBlaCar. We also now know that the market is open, and building an app is not as difficult as it might have seemed.

If you are one of those inspiring entrepreneurs who would like to build a business out of the carpooling market by using an on-demand mobile app, all you need to do is get in touch with the company that specializes in the creation and customization of white label clones of BlaBlaCar. The company will take care of not only to provide you with the app script but also customize it according to your business requirements, so you can launch your carpooling app in the shortest possible time!

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