You are in the 1819. My guest is someone you know well, Frédéric Mazzella. Good evening, Frédéric.
Good evening, thank you for having me.
You are the founding chairman of BlaBlaCar, co-chairman of France Digitale, and founder of DIFT. DIFT, which you created, let's start there because it's December. It's a generosity platform where 'plus gift' makes 'dift'. And what does 'dift December' do? Because December is when you, the listeners and viewers, are the most generous. 23% of donations are distributed in December. That's a lot. Why did you create DIFT? What do you intend to do with it?
It's a desire to use technology for something good. That's what I've always wanted to do with all the projects I've launched, whether it's BlaBlaCar or DIFT. The goal is to use technology to serve us and for more sharing. In this case, DIFT allows directing money towards associative projects in the social or environmental fields. Companies can allocate funds that will go to associations, leaving the choice of attribution of these funds to their partners or clients. This is a model we use today with 350 companies. It has allowed us to finance 20 million euros towards 300 associations in 3 years.
Which associations, exactly? That's interesting.
There are associations in all fields. We have 300 associations, so it's really a lot. There are associations that remove plastic from the oceans, others that bring happiness to children's hospitals, others that help the most disadvantaged in their daily lives or in their reintegration, others that save endangered species. It's very, very vast. There are also health projects, obviously. It's a way for companies to contribute to all associative projects, involving clients and employees who choose the allocation of funds. This is a model we've developed with 350 client companies who, on the occasion of year-end holidays or New Year's wishes, choose to offer meaning instead of corporate gifts, which are sometimes always the same. They offer meaning by saying to their clients and partners, this year we're doing something meaningful, we're building field action and meaning together. And so you will allocate, it can be difts, since it's now a common noun, difts of 10, 20, 50, 100 euros, sometimes 500 euros, that each client or partner can direct with the company's money. And then there's also the side for individuals. That's the new product we launched at the start of the school year, where we allow everyone to create a solidarity kitty to collect money for their favorite project, their association, and especially on the occasion of holidays, it's very used because it allows saying to your circle, if you don't know what to offer me, I accept donations as Christmas gifts, and you can simply make a donation on my solidarity kitty. I want to say, if it's to mount a play, if it's to organize a concert, if it's, I mean, everything is open, it's open bar. Today, they are only projects of general interest, associations of general interest that are non-political and non-religious. So, today, we have filtered and selected 300 associations on the portal, on DIFT. We accept new ones every day.
Yes, because if I want to create an association, how do I... I mean, there's a filter.
You have to contact us. Yes, of course. And it's you who decide. OK, it meets our criteria. Yes. And then there's also an involvement of the association itself, which will mobilize its donors to create collection kitties. That is to say, there's still an action to be done by the association to recover additional funds and also often new donors. Because when you create solidarity kitties, what happens is that more than 80% of people who give on individual solidarity kitties are new donors for the association. That's very important. That means DIFT is the only platform, the only place where associations can come and not only recover new funds, but also recover new donors. Usually, when they need to find new donors, they pay because they need to be known. Well, thanks to DIFT, not only do they not pay, but they also recover money and new donors. Because there aren't many platforms that do that. So the little plus of DIFT is the way we do it. No, not so much on... No, because everyone has their own particularity, obviously, but yes, on solidarity collections today, we have a fairly innovative approach that involves the first circle of associations, donors and volunteers, who themselves will go find their circle to reach the second circle. And that's the magic of the technological platform, which allows multiplying the collection power for the benefit of generosity for associations.
And do you use artificial intelligence to verify what the associations are doing? Because there are many associations and there are, you know, the abuses. Forgive me, I have to play a bit of the dark side of the force, but...
We have about fifteen criteria. We verify the governance, obviously very important in associations. We verify, we do a financial audit, we also do a follow-up of impact indicators. We verify that they are structures that know how to follow their impact indicators well. We verify that they are innovative and that they make the most effective use of their budget. So there are about fifteen criteria in this way, in addition to the fact that, as I said, they must be of general interest, non-political and non-religious. And so what we wanted to do also in December is to complement this new tool available to associations to collect new funds with an overarching envelope called Diftember. Why Diftember? Because it's like December in English, and it's with DIFT, since it's the concept of being generous during this period to symbolize this month of generosity that already exists, as you mentioned, since 23% of annual donations are made in December. It's also for tax reasons, since all these donations give rise to a tax reduction of 66% for individuals and 60% for companies. So obviously generosity is encouraged in our society. So it's a good thing and it allows multiplying this impact. And so on Diftember, at the beginning of December, we launched on December 1st, we have already collected 600,000 euros for Diftember which went to 70 partner associations of Diftember, the operation Diftember that we launched. And then we also organized a great race on December 10th to energize Station F, just to show that you're never very far from tech, Frédéric Mazzella. No. Yes. And so what we did is we organized a first, it was called the DIFT Live Challenge. It's a challenge where we put about twenty runners on stage who are actually entrepreneurs, creators, influencers who pedal for a good cause.
There was Xavier who pedaled.
No, Xavier didn't come to pedal, but Roxane Varza came to pedal. So Roxane Varza, the director of Station F. There was also Thalès, Chris, Jean-Pierre Nadir, Maya Noël, Agad, all your crew from 'Qui veut être mon associé'.
Moussa Camara, not only. Yes, Catherine Barbara was there too.
That's true. But so there you go, it's an idea to make generosity not only normal in our society, but also attractive because we need it. Often, I'm asked why BlaBlaCar worked, why it succeeded. It's not only because we made a good product, good customer service, and we responded to a need to travel for less, it's also because we did everything to make it attractive. Carpooling became cool, it became enviable, it became... we integrated it into our... Exactly. But it wasn't the case when we started. When we started, it wasn't the case. And with generosity, I see the same situation. There's a need to dust off generosity a bit, and that's what we're doing with a new platform, with a new communication approach, with a much more attractive approach that makes people want to participate. And that's what we're doing with DIFT, and we see it because we now know that almost 200,000 people have already 'difted', since it's also becoming a verb, just to direct money to associations.
Small question. You who are a Normalien, do you never want to speak French? Ah, well, there, in the... Ah, but I mean, 5 years ago you did Normal Sup, and it's neither French nor English. I mean, 'gift' comes from... it's not French, 'gift'... no, but anyway, 'don' is... 'September' is not French either. We created... how to say... well, anyway, you also have to see that when you create a technological platform with potential international scope, you have to think of a brand that works everywhere, otherwise you're forced to change the brand along the way. We saw it with covoiturage.fr, BlaBlaCar was called covoiturage.fr before, so I started with covoiturage.fr and then we had to change the name to BlaBlaCar, it wasn't very simple, and so it's additional challenges to be able to internationalize because covoiturage.fr didn't work and covoiturage in Spanish didn't work either. So we had to find one that works, neither French nor... it's international. It's funny, it's a brand we call 'glocal', meaning it's both global and local because BlaBla is international. 'Car' is in the 100 most known words internationally since it's in English words. So it's an extremely global international brand and DIFT can do the same, especially since it's even shorter. And dift.com, well, there you go, it's six characters.
Listen, in any case, we wish it. Frédéric Mazzella is going to talk because it's the start of the holidays. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, Christmas, then it's the 31st. Everyone is going to use, well, not everyone, but many people are going to take their car, the train or the bus, and notably BlaBlaCar. For you, it's also the most important month.
Yes, and it's funny because it's also the month when the idea for BlaBlaCar came, since it's during the holidays that I had the idea to launch a service like BlaBlaCar. So it's a very, very, very busy time. There, we have 400,000 travelers per week already on the week... 400,000 travelers per week. Yes. On the week just before Christmas. So we see that there's a very strong enthusiasm for this mode of travel. Especially since it's for trips generally to go to family. There are many trips radiating from big cities to areas a bit more everywhere in France to return to family, as is the case during the Christmas holidays. And so there's both today on the carpooling platform but also on the bus, we were talking about it, and also on the train. That's our big 2025 novelty. We launched the possibility of booking train tickets on BlaBlaCar. It's several hundred thousand trains, sorry not thousands of trains, several hundred thousand trains that have already been sold in a few months of activity.
Ah, at least a start of a figure, because with you there's never any figure, but there, how much did you say? A few hundred thousand tickets sold. Narrow it down a bit. What does that give? What does it make? 500,000? What does it make?
It's almost 1 million. It's less than half a million tickets sold in a few months. But compared to carpooling or bus, it's less, since in carpooling it's 7.5 million passengers in 2025 and it's 6.5 million passengers in bus for the year 2025. There, I'm giving you figures, you want them. So there, we love figures. You know BFM Business well, you know we have figures. No, if I ask the question, it's interesting to see because there, you're competing with the SNCF with its France Connect application that we all know.
Yes, well, we see ourselves more as complementary and distributor than competitor because it's less who passes through them. Well, yes and no, because if you want, we distribute train tickets today, it's a deficit activity because the commissions left on train ticket distribution are so low.
