- BlaBlaCar acquires its rival Klaxit and strengthens its position in home-to-work carpooling
- Klaxit offers a free model for passengers
- The objective is to seek out the 10 million motorists who take their car alone every day
BlaBlaCar has just announced the acquisition of the Klaxit platform for an undisclosed amount. This operation, which has not yet been fully finalized, is a major event in the home-to-work carpooling niche. Indeed, BlaBlaCar wants to integrate Klaxit in addition to its BlaBlaCar Daily offer “in the segment of services to communities and businesses”.
The atypical model of Klaxit
Concretely, Klaxit recorded 2.6 million trips in 2022, when its rival had 1.5 million. This places them in a very advantageous position in a French home-to-work carpooling market where 5.2 million trips were recorded last year.
Founded in 2012, the Klaxit startup offers an atypical model. Its CEO Julien Honnart indeed explained to AFP that he had quickly noticed that “motorists were not prepared to pay a driver to take them to work. »
To solve the problem, he decided to offer the trips to users. The driver is paid (between 1.50 and 4 euros per passenger). To finance itself, the company relies on the mobility package, as well as on partnerships with 380 companies (80% of which are listed on the CAC40) and local authorities.
An ambitious operation
In a press release published for the occasion, BlaBlaCar makes no secret of its ambitions. The unicorn explains as follows: “There are still more than 10 million motorists who take their car alone every day, which makes the efforts to offer them solutions adapted to their needs and their constraints all the more important in order to travel more economically and ecological. »
Therefore, this union between two carpooling players should be able “to double or triple this year, and with the momentum we’re seeing right now. We have to manage to do x10 or x20 in a few years. That’s the ambition.”exclaims Nicolas Brusson, CEO of BlaBlaCar.
This operation also fits perfectly with the ambitions displayed by the government in this area. The executive thus announced the Carpooling Plan recently which aims to avoid 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year, while the individual car is more than ever in the sights of the authorities.
