Every few weekends, 21-year-old student Lavanya Jain opens the BlaBlaCar app to find a ride from Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, to your home in Kandhla, a small town in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The 120-kilometer trip costs him around 500 rupees, the equivalent of about $6. That’s a fraction of the ₹1,500 – ₹2,000, or between $17 and $23, you would pay for a private taxi.
“If you are looking for a fast, efficient, affordable and convenient way to travel, and you like chatting, you should basically try BlaBlaCar,” Jain told TechCrunch, adding that he has used the app 40 to 50 times in the last two years.
Jain is one of millions of Indians turning to long-distance carpooling as a cheaper and more social way to travel between cities. That increase has made India the company’s largest market worldwide, with an estimated 20 million passengers this year, almost 50% more than the previous year. According to that forecast, BlaBlaCar’s Indian market would exceed the projected 18 million passengers in Brazil and its home market of France.
For a company that closed its India office in 2017 after poor performance, the turnaround is surprising.
The growth has largely come without marketing or a local team, driven rather by word of mouth, the expansion of mobile Internet access and the rise of digital payments and car ownership among India’s middle class.
India is home to more than 700 million smartphone users and has seen a sharp increase in digital payments, which now represent more than 99% of all transactions in the country.
At the center of that change is the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, backed by the Indian government, which processed around 19.6 billion transfers worth around 24.9 trillion rupees (approximately $284 billion) in September alone. Car sales have increased at the same time, reaching 4.73 million vehicles in 2024, compared to 3.87 million the previous year: a year-on-year increase of 5.2% and an all-time high.
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Other factors behind BlaBlaCar’s rapid growth in India include the country’s limited public transport capacity relative to its more than 1.4 billion people and the constant expansion of road infrastructure that is improving connectivity between smaller towns, rural areas and major cities.
“We have many examples of users saying, ‘Before I flew to a destination or took the train or didn’t go at all, and now I can drive. It takes three hours and it’s a pleasant trip,'” Nicolas Brusson, co-founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar, said in an interview.
BlaBlaCar entered for the first time India in early 2015, establishing a local office in New Delhi. The company soon faced stiff competition from Uber and local rival Ola, both experimenting with car sharing services and market them intensively. (Companies ended up suspending those car-sharing services during the COVID-19 closures.)
Struggling to gain traction, BlaBlaCar retired its local team in 2017. Still, the app remained active, and in 2022, usage began to rise again. Since then, it has skyrocketed from 4.3 million users in 2022 to a projected 20 million this year.
BlaBlaCar has averaged around 1.1 million monthly active users in India this year, peaking at around 1.5 million in August. About three-quarters are passengers, while the remaining 25% are drivers. India now accounts for about 33% of BlaBlaCar’s global ride-sharing passengers, the company said.
On the ride front, BlaBlaCar recorded its biggest growth in India, with 13.5 million rides completed as of September 30, up from 9.1 million in the same period last year. Brazil remained slightly ahead, with 14 million trips this year compared to 11.7 million in 2023, while France came in third with 5.6 million trips, virtually the same as the previous year.
“For us, the center of gravity has shifted away from our initial markets in Western Europe towards places like Japan, Turkey and, increasingly, India,” Brusson told TechCrunch.
Although BlaBlaCar is not yet generating revenue in India, drivers on its platform earned around Rs 713 million (around $8 million) in August alone, the company said. On average, drivers earn around ₹390 (approximately $4) per seat in India, with an average travel distance of 180 kilometers (approximately 112 miles).
By comparison, average driver earnings are about 15 euros (about $17) in France and about 6.5 euros (about $7) in Brazil, although travel distances are very similar in India and Brazil and shorter than France’s average of about 250 kilometers (about 155 miles). The difference, BlaBlaCar said, reflects lower local purchasing power and cost-sharing expectations in India.
Almost 70% of BlaBlaCar’s Indian users are between 18 and 34 years old, and around 95% of the activity is done through its mobile app. About half of all trips in India occur along the country’s 15 busiest intercity routes, while the other half comes from outside the top 150 corridors, evidence of growing adoption beyond large metropolitan areas and into smaller cities. Among the busiest routes are Pune-Thane and Pune-Nashik in Maharashtra, Bengaluru-Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh and several others linking medium-sized urban centres.
“There is no rush” to start monetization
Despite all this growth, BlaBlaCar is not looking to enable monetization in India anytime soon.
“We are in no hurry to start introducing a tariff or generating revenue in India. We are focused on generating usage and we have the reproduction because we have done it in several markets,” Brusson told TechCrunch.
However, BlaBlaCar plans to set up its local office in India and have the first hire by the end of this year or early next year, Brusson said.
BlaBlaCar does not consider ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Ola to be its competitors in India. Brusson described them as “demand-based” products, while BlaBlaCar, he said, is “supply-based.” Instead, the company sees people who drive their own cars (or opt for readily available trains and buses) as its main substitutes.
Challenges on your path to success
BlaBlaCar still faces some challenges in India.
State regulations on carpooling are ambiguous, which has put the service under scrutiny in some cities. Some users, including Jain, have complained that it can be difficult to contact BlaBlaCar customer service, which often responds with automated messages. The company told TechCrunch that it operates a “blended model,” with an outsourced local team handling most daily queries and a smaller group at its Paris headquarters that handles complex issues and quality checks.
BlaBlaCar introduced an identity verification feature in India to verify users’ identities through government-issued documents, a tool it later rolled out globally. However, TechCrunch found that users can still book or post a trip even if their ID verification is incomplete.
“This is a deliberate design choice to make it easier for new members to interact with the platform,” the company said in response. “Identity verification is just one part of our broader trust and security framework; we don’t rely on a single feature, but on multiple layered mechanisms that work together to build trust within our community.”
The company added that more than 70% of rides in India are made with drivers who have completed government identity verification. BlaBlaCar also displays user reviews and ratings and verifies accounts via phone numbers and email addresses.
“We actively encourage members to complete all verification steps, as fully verified profiles (with photo and ID) significantly increase the chances of finding ridesharers. Profiles lacking these elements tend to receive fewer bookings,” the company said.
Some BlaBlaCar users in India also express frustration when drivers or passengers cancel trips at the last minute, sometimes even after arriving at the meeting point. Additionally, the app lacks a live location sharing feature, which Jain noted limits the use of BlaBlaCar for those trying to book rides on behalf of family or friends.
BlaBlaCar has adapted its product to better suit Indian users, introducing features like “meeting point logic” to make coordination easier. Unlike countries like France, where there are designated car-sharing zones, India lacks fixed pick-up areas. Drivers and passengers often agree to meet at convenient locations along the route: a gas station, for example, or near a highway exit. The app now suggests and displays these locations using a combination of machine learning algorithms and user input, helping to reduce detours and align with India’s land infrastructure, the company said.
Globally, BlaBlaCar expects to reach about 150 million passengers this year, including users of its bus services, which operate in markets such as France but are not yet available in India. As BlaBlaCar expands its global presence, India’s unexpected rise has positioned it at the center of the company’s next phase of growth.
