Ride sharing platform BlaBlaCar picks up $200m investment; valued at $1.5 billion

Ride sharing platform BlaBlaCar has become one of the best funded startups in Europe with a 200 million dollar investment from Insight Venture Partners. The website has received more than 300 million in investments and is currently worth around 1.4 billion dollars, according to the Financieele Dagblad. BlaBlaCar is an online platforms that brings people together to share cars on long journeys. Someone wishing to travel to another city abroad, can visit the website to look for someone driving in that direction. Members can specify how much chatting they would like on the journey on a scale from "Bla" to "BlaBlaBla". The idea is not that motorists make profit, but share in traveling costs. The site has over 20 million members and is active in 19 countries, RTL Nieuws reports. It is seen as the market leader in the sharing economy. BlaBlacar is one of the few successful startups with a profitable business model. The company keeps about 15 percent of the agreed upon fare as booking fees. In April of this year it took over its largest competitor carpooling.com. "This funding is an important step in transforming mobility on a global scale. With this additional investment we can accelerate our growth in new and exciting markets and build the largest, people powered transport community in the world", said co-founder Nicolas Brusson. Investor Insight Venture Partners describes BlaBlacar's success as "rare". "You hardly ever find a company of such a big size, but still at the beginning of a much bigger story."