Every few weekends, 21-year-old student Lavanya Jain opens the BlaBlaCar app to find a lift from Noida to the outskirts of New Delhi to his home in Kandhla, a small town in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The 120 km trip costs him about ₹500, which is about $6. That’s a fraction of the ₹1,500-2,000, or $17-23, one would pay for a private taxi.
“If you’re looking for a fast, efficient, affordable and comfortable way to travel — and you like to chat — you should basically check out BlaBlaCar,” Jain told TechCrunch, adding that he’s used the app about 40 to 50 times in the past two years.
Jain is one of millions of Indians who are turning to long-distance carpooling as a cheaper, more social way to travel between cities. That rise has made India the company’s biggest market globally, with an estimated 20 million passengers this year — nearly 50% more than a year earlier. Based on this forecast, BlaBlaCar’s market in India will surpass the 18 million passengers projected in Brazil and its home market of France.
For a company that closed its India office in 2017 after poor traction, the turnaround is impressive.
Growth has come largely without marketing or a local team, driven by word of mouth, expanding mobile internet access and the rise of digital payments and car ownership among India’s middle class.
India hosts more than 700 million smartphone users and has seen a sharp rise in digital payments, which they now account for over 99% of all transactions in the country.
At the heart of this change is the Indian government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which processed approximately 19.6 billion transfers worth about ₹24.9 trillion (about $284 billion) in September alone. Car sales have risen alongside, reaching 4.73 million vehicles in 2024, up from 3.87 million a year earlier — up 5.2% year-over-year 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 population of over 1.4 billion and the steady expansion of road infrastructure that improves connectivity between smaller towns, rural areas and major cities.
“We have many examples of users saying, ‘Before, I used to fly to a destination or take the train or not go at all — and now I can actually drive. It takes three hours and it’s a pleasant ride,” Nicolas Brusson, co-founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar, said in an interview.
BlaBlaCar entered first India in early 2015, establishing a local office in New Delhi. The company soon faced stiff competition from Uber and local rival Ola, which were both are experimenting with carpooling services and marketing to a large extent. (Companies would end up suspending these carpooling services during the COVID-19 lockdown.)
Trying to gain traction, BlaBlaCar retired its local team in 2017. However, the app stayed alive — and in 2022, usage started to grow again. Since then, it has rocketed from 4.3 million users in 2022 to 20 million projected this year.
BlaBlaCar has averaged about 1.1 million monthly active users in India this year, peaking at about 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 carpool passengers, the company said.
In terms of trips, BlaBlaCar recorded its strongest growth in India, with 13.5 million trips 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 took third place with 5.6 million trips, broadly unchanged from last year.
“For us, the center of gravity has shifted from our original markets in Western Europe to places like Japan, Turkey — and increasingly India,” Brusson told TechCrunch.
Although BlaBlaCar is not yet generating revenue from India, drivers on its platform earned about ₹713 million (about $8 million) in August alone, the company said. On average, drivers earn about ₹390 (about $4) per seat in India, with an average trip distance of 180 kilometers (about 112 miles).
In comparison, average driver earnings are about €15 (about $17) in France and about €6.5 (about $7) in Brazil, even though trip distances are broadly 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 the ages of 18 and 34, and about 95% of the activity takes place through its mobile app. About half of the journeys in India are along the country’s 15 busiest intercity routes, while the other half come from outside the top 150 corridors – evidence of growing adoption beyond major metros and into smaller cities. Among the busiest routes are Pune–Thane and Pune–Nashik in Maharashtra, Bengaluru–Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh and several others connecting medium-sized urban centres.
“No rush” to start monetizing
Despite all this growth, BlaBlaCar isn’t looking to turn on monetization in India anytime soon.
“We’re not in a rush to start introducing a fee or monetizing in India. We’re focused on generating usage and we have replication because we’ve done it in multiple markets,” Brusson told TechCrunch.
But BlaBlaCar plans to set up its local office in India and have its first hire by the end of this year or early next year, Brusson said.
BlaBlaCar does not consider competing platforms like Uber and Ola in India. Brusson described them as “demand-driven” products, while BlaBlaCar, he said, is “supply-driven.” Instead, the company sees people driving their own cars — or opting for readily available trains and buses — as its primary substitutes.
Challenges on the road 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’s customer support, which often responds with automated messages. The company told TechCrunch that it operates a “mixed model,” with a local outsourced team handling most day-to-day inquiries and a smaller team at its Paris headquarters handling complex issues and quality checks.
BlaBlaCar introduced an authentication feature in India to verify users’ identities through government-issued documents — a tool that was later rolled out globally. However, TechCrunch found that users can still book or post a ride even if their authentication is incomplete.
“This is a deliberate design choice to make it easier for new members to engage with the platform,” the company said in response. “Identity verification is only one part of the larger framework of trust and security. We don’t rely on a single feature, but on multiple, layered mechanisms that work together to build trust in our community.”
The company added that more than 70% of trips in India are with drivers who have completed government ID 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 — greatly increase the chances of finding partners. Profiles lacking these tend to receive fewer bookings,” the company said.
Some BlaBlaCar users in India also report frustration when drivers or passengers cancel trips at the last minute, sometimes even after reaching the meeting point. Additionally, the app lacks live location sharing, which Jain noted limits the use of BlaBlaCar for those trying to book rides on behalf of family members or friends.
BlaBlaCar has adapted its product to better suit Indian users, introducing features such as “meeting point logic” to make coordination easier. Unlike countries like France, where there are designated carpooling zones, India does not have fixed pick-up areas. Drivers and passengers usually agree to meet at convenient points along the route – a gas station, for example, or near a freeway exit. The app now recommends and displays these locations using a combination of machine learning algorithms and user input, helping to reduce detours and align with India’s on-the-ground infrastructure, the company said.
Globally, BlaBlaCar expects to reach around 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 footprint, India’s unexpected rise has placed it at the heart of the company’s next phase of growth.
