Co-Founder & CEO, BlaBlaCar SA (Comuto SA)
Nicolas Brusson : BlaBlaCar lève 115M de dollars pour accélérer sa stratégie de croissance
Ce mercredi 21 avril, Nicolas Brusson, cofondateur et directeur général de BlaBlaCar, est revenu sur la levée de fonds de 115 millions de dollars qu'il a réalisée et sur ses perspectives de croissance dans l'émission Good Morning Business présentée par Audrey Maubert et Christophe Jakubyszyn. Good Morning Business est à voir ou écouter du lundi au vendredi sur BFM Business. 👋 Bienvenue sur la chaîne YouTube officielle de BFM Business, première chaîne d'information économique et financière de France.
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About Nicolas Brusson
Nicolas Brusson, co-founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar, has spoken at several conferences between 2013 and 2016 about the company's growth and vision. He described BlaBlaCar as a long-distance ride-sharing platform that allows drivers with empty seats to offer them to passengers traveling the same route, offsetting the cost of driving without making a profit. Brusson emphasized that the company was originally not conceived as part of the sharing economy but later benefited from that framing. He noted that the brand name, derived from users' talking preferences, has helped with word-of-mouth and press coverage. Brusson has discussed the company's approach to funding and expansion, stating that BlaBlaCar never formally pitched to large numbers of venture capitalists but instead built targeted relationships with investors over time. He said the goal is to build global companies to remain competitive against U.S. and Chinese competitors. Brusson highlighted that 80% of intercity passenger traffic is done by car, and that BlaBlaCar aims to improve road efficiency by filling empty seats. He said the company initially focuses on usage in new markets, such as India, before introducing monetization like booking fees. Brusson also predicted that as cars become autonomous, private cars will increasingly become public transport, and that the long-term trend will involve shared, self-driving cars.
Transcript (7 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
Good morning, Business French Tech. It's 6:47, so it's time for our French Tech with a guest today: a unicorn since it's BlaBlaCar and its co-founder and CEO Nicolas Brusson. Hello, hello. So we're going to talk about a new fundraising round: $115 million, but it's a special one: seven volumes? It's clothing? Because it might be the last one, because the next step will probably be the stock market. We wish you that in any case. We'll invite you for that. In any case, what's interesting about this considerable sum, still, but at your scale, is that BlaBlaCar is probably accelerating its development because of or thanks to this health crisis. Because you suffered a lot, especially in Europe, but you suffered much less elsewhere, and so now you will put this money to use for your international development, and also probably because you suffered less than your competitors like airlines or railways.
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Nicolas Brusson0:49
Yes exactly. The context is very unique because we are doing a fundraising while, if we look in absolute terms, we had a year 2020 and we are surely heading towards a year 2021 that will be worse than 2019. In the startup world, that's not really normal; we are supposed to grow and grow fast. Then again, maybe it takes a minute or two to understand the context. In hindsight, we have a bit of perspective on 2020. We have a lot of figures from listed companies that have come out, and we see that companies like Expedia, for example, representing air travel, are down 66% between 2019 and 2020. Train travel, I think, is down 79%. Booking.com, hotels, I think down 58%. We went from 70 million passengers to 50 million, a drop of 30%. So in absolute terms, not great, a disaster. But when we compare ourselves, we are sure. And above all, what it means is that we gained market share compared to air, compared to rail, compared to bus, in almost all markets. It's mainly in Europe that we gained market share in carpooling, or also in bus transport? Well, it's both. So it's carpooling in general. Why? Because the carpooling network is much more flexible, agile, and has fewer fixed costs. The network re-establishes itself naturally. We don't need to decide if people will go from Paris to Lyon or go to the countryside; it happens in a fine-grained way, collective intelligence, in fact. In the face of that, and in countries, in Europe, an acceleration of the bus because of an acceleration of online reservations. You need to understand very quickly that in Brazil, Russia, all these countries, 90% of bus reservations, which are very large markets, are actually made at ticket counters. And part of the COVID story is this acceleration during the year: everything is done online, reserved online, e-commerce, etc. Transport also, that's good for you obviously. That's what we observe. So actually today we are seeing positive growth compared to 2019 in these markets for bus, not because people are traveling more by bus, but because people are reserving more online.
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Interviewer2:53
But finally, you, there was the crisis, certainly, but it accelerated a trend that already existed. Is it that in Europe and on the French market, the market was already mature, and so you are developing elsewhere, where there is everything to do?
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Nicolas Brusson3:05
Yes, and these are ends for us? Actually, these are larger markets. So it's obvious to say: there are more people in Brazil, the transport markets are larger, and also the transport markets are much more fragmented. So when we look at Russia, Brazil, we can say India, Mexico, all these countries where we are, there are actually hundreds of bus operators. Sometimes there is no train, there are no? Brazil doesn't even have a train operator. So clearly in these markets, there is a missing application where a user can go to book and thus aggregate the players on the ground, like the Booking.com of bus, the aggregator. What you are: you have your own buses, obviously, but you also offer the offers of other bus operators, so you aggregate their offers. That's it, yes. Exactly. That's what you need to understand. Actually, France is rather the exception. Or Europe is rather the exception. We are a kind of virtual operator, a railway with partners, but there we control the bus, we decide the prices, the buses carry our brand. That's it. In other markets, it's actually much larger. In fact, we aggregate the existing, and again, we are a marketplace where Amazon, Booking.com of the bus.
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Interviewer4:08
So I was talking about next steps and the IPO. We all think about it, because obviously you have had to open a round of funding to new investors. You had VNB Global before, now you have welcomed Otiva? and FMI Adventures. It was hard, by the way, to do a new round of funding by bringing in new partners. Is it that you say, 'Well, it would be better on the stock market, even if we could be a bit more diluted?' That's my chance? It's the fastest round of financing we've ever had? True. So actually, it's accelerated. There really was a trend, and the crisis, there was the time, I mean, from March 2020, everything stopped until roughly November. Then in November, two things happened: the vaccine, obviously, which suddenly gives perspective, we see the end of the tunnel, and the Airbnb IPO. Airbnb has always been a look-alike? We are in the sharing economy, we are on community models very, very similar, brand values very similar. And Airbnb had a fantastic debut with valuations, I think very good, even though, as you said, it wasn't a good year for them? But it's exactly the same story: they did much better than all the others because it's a platform? Because there is this flexibility in the platform, because their inventory adapted to this new demand, and so it adapts much faster because they are not constrained by other cases, like bus stations or railway stations. They are not constrained by hotels. Eventually, the inventory adjusts quickly. So, the IPO: do you think about it when you shave in the morning? But...
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Nicolas Brusson5:30
Now, yes. No, we have been thinking about it since the bus? The way we think about it is: we want to remain independent. So we want to remain independent as long as possible, perhaps always. And ultimately, that means one day we will go public. It's because we are doing it right now. Then, is this the logical next step? Yes. Are the stock markets quite open for tech today? Clearly, I think there is a window open. Will it still be open in 2022? We have to think about that. Would you go to which market? We haven't asked ourselves that type of question yet. But with a horizon of 2022, we are thinking about it seriously. The place? No, that is to say, actually, it's more about preparing. And preparing is a whole bunch of internal processes. But then, where do we eat? What valuation did you have? 2.2 billion? About 2-3 billion? And it was structured as a convertible, a convertible bond that converts at 2 billion? You have a 10.40 for the next round? So yes, basically that comes down to...
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Interviewer6:25
Thank you very much, Nicolas Brusson, co-founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar, and congratulations on this new round of funding and its insolent prospects? But, but, but, but remarkable.