France based ride-sharing startup has valued more than 1.5 billion last year with 70 million customers across 22 countries. The startup founded in 2006, with the idea of carpooling to reduce transportation expenses for the car owners. The startup has set a target to reach 45million customers by the end of 2025.

What is their Business Model?

In BlaBlaCar, The driver or car owner who is traveling to a particular location can offer the ride to the passenger to share the travel expenses. The car owners can share their ride with the travelers for the same route by posting Ad on the app. In return, the passengers pay a respective amount to the can owners for the ride that they have taken as a sharing.

Car Owners: Car owners share their details (Time, Date and Pick up point) in the application for the route that they are traveling.

Passenger: Passengers can search for a car for the same route and send a request to car owners. Car owner accepts passenger’s request and further they both coordinate with each other through the in-app chat feature. The travelers then pay their part to the owners directly to cover reasonable expenses.

Identity Verification for Secure & Safe Ride: To make the ride safe and secure, The car owner and passenger has to verify their identity by submitting the valid information along with any Government ID. Otherwise, the app won’t allow them to share or request the journey. 

Bla Bla car makes money by collecting transaction fee per ride (Approximately 10-12%) of the total cost of the ride.

Ideal Features of the App 

 The app has the following ideal features to serve the customers its best. 

  • Easy, Simple Login: The app has very simple, easy login for both car owners and co-passengers. They can log in to their accounts by entering email id as a username and password or can by social media like Facebook and Twitter. If they are new to the app they sign up through social media.
  • Create Profiles: After successful registration and login the car owner or a passenger has to set up their profile by adding the following details 
    • One verified government approved ID, 
    • Name, 
    • Profile Picture, 
    • Mobile Number, and Mail ID.
  • Account Details: In the profile section, The passenger can link his/her wallet accounts with the app to make the payment for the ride or they can choose a suitable payment method. In addition, this section features Available Balance, Payments, and Past Transactions.
  • Search a Ride: The passenger, who would like to travel from a certain place to another he/she can find a ride by entering  ‘Leaving from’ to ‘Where To’ details. Therefore, the app will display the list of rides scheduled on that and also the passenger can apply multiple filters to sort the best suitable ride (Time and Cost).
  • Offer A Ride: The single person can act as a car owner and passenger. If you’re traveling on your car you can share a ride by mentioning the details to get the response from the other passengers.
  • Cancel Ride: If any change in the travel plan the passenger can cancel the booking as soon as they can.
  • Trip Information: Riders can view trip information by clicking on the ride details. You can also check- pick up and drop location, price, and other facilities.
  • Calculate Time And Fare: For location A to B, the car owners can calculate time and fare with ease. The app will help riders and drivers estimate how much they will spend or earn on a trip.
  • In-app Messaging: The riders and drivers can easily communicate through the in-app messaging feature.
  • Intuitive Notifications: Drivers and riders will receive notifications on the activities that come from the rider or driver side. In addition, new updates and offers will be sent by the company to the riders and car owners.
  • VoIP Calling: Good to have VoIP calling feature to protect the privacy of riders and drivers.
  • Live Tracking & Easy Navigation: Live tracking will help you locate the live location of your ridesharing partner such as car owner, while easy navigation will keep you updated with your destination. For security concern, riders can share their live location with their family and friends.
  • Rating & Feedback System: Rating can be done from both sides as co-passenger can give rating & review about car owner’s riding skills and behaviors. On the other side, the driver can also give the rating to the riders on the basis of their nature or behavior.
  • Simplified Payments Process: Multiple payment options to help riders pay with ease. This section features in-app wallet where the rider and driven can check current balance status with ease.
  • Generate Invoices: Co-passenger can get past and ongoing invoices of rides that they had taken in the past.
  • Incentives & Referral Program: To stay long with the application or services, the company provides offers and referral program to invite others for the BlaBlaCar services.

How to Build a Carpooling App-like BlaBlaCar

If you want to make your own app like-BlaBlaCar then you can hire mobile an app developer or good Mobile App Development Company. To make a perfect carpooling app, you can consider all these features that we have discussed above.

Technologies Stack

  • Cloud Environment – AWS, Google, Azure
  • Four square’s Place API– for Listing the places
  • Google & Facebook SDK– For Social Login
  • Google Analytics or Mix Panel – For performance & analysis.
  • Amazon S3-For Data Backup
  • Stripe, PayPal- For Secure Payment Integration

Core Location Framework (for iOS), and Google’s Places API (for Android) – GPS Tracking For Both User’s and Driver’s Location.

Conclusion 

The development of a ride sharing app like Bla Bla Car for sharing them is easy but surviving on the market with tough competition from rivals is another big story, the company needs to hire a digital marketing team to take the app into the market with diverse promotions and offers.