French startup BlaBlaCar valued at $1.5 Billion after new funding

There is a bus stop in Mumbai where a taxi leaves every 15 minutes with four passengers bound for Pune, 150 kilometers away.

Insight Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital and Vostok New Ventures participated in the latest fund-raising round.

With over 20 million registered members, BlaBlaCar has brought ridesharing to the mainstream, creating an affordable way to travel between cities that is entirely based on wasted car capacity – i.e. empty seats. The funding will also be used for future expansion where BlaBlaCar currently has its sights on Brazil, Asia and additional markets in Latin America. “Emerging markets like India, for example, tend to have a fairly deficient transport infrastructure, and yet very strong demand for travel”, said Brusson.

Blablacar, which is already present across Europe and launched recently in Russia, India, Mexico and Turkey, was valued at 1.4 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in the fundraising round, said a person close to the matter.

BlaBlaCar had launched its operations in India in January this year.

Jeff Horing, managing director at Insight Venture Partners, will be joining the board of BlaBlacar.

BlaBlaCar was founded in 2006 by Frédéric Mazzella, CEO, Francis Nappez, CTO, and Nicolas Brusson, COO.

This investment follows a €125,000 Series A led by ISAI (2011), a $10 million Series B led by Accel Partners (2012), and a $100 million Series C led by Index Ventures (2014).

The app has had enormous success and is already active in more than 19 countries worldwide. Currently, India is the only Asian country in which it operates.

Then there are smaller players like RideInSync and Carpooling.in.

While car services such as Uber have clashed with French authorities over regulatory and tax issues, Blablacar has met less resistance.