It’s cheaper to share. That’s the basis of a trend known as the sharing economy, in which people split costs for traveling, share clothes and economize in other ways.
Ukraine’s technology sector is already making money from the sharing economy.
“People are not yet fed up with consumerism but are starting to switch to sharing services,” Oleksiy Lazorenko, Ukrainian country manager for Blablacar, a global ridesharing company, told the Kyiv Post. “It’s just cheaper.”
This shared use of scarce resources works well for traveling, clothes, tools and even lodgings.
With Blablacar, instead of buying a ticket on a train to, say, Ternopil, one might check online if there are any travelers going to Ternopil in their own cars and join them. It can be cheaper and more comfortable than a bus or train ticket.
The holiday rental service Airbnb and TaskRabbit, an outsourcing marketplace, use the model too. Together with Blablacar, they have raised more than $900 million in funding.
Another popular service is Germany’s Foodsharing, a two-year-old Internet platform that provides its 55,000 members, restaurants among them, with an opportunity to share extra tomatoes, grapes or any food that they don’t need.
Don’t travel alone
French-born ridesharing giant founded back in 2006, Blablacar officially entered the Ukrainian market through acquiring its local competitor Podorozhniki in January this year, for up to $3 million reportedly. Podorozhniki founder Lazorenko became Blablacar’s chief manager for Ukraine and Russia. He moved to Moscow, while the development team stayed in Kyiv.
“Markets in Ukraine and Russia are huge, we’re growing like crazy,” Blablacar co-founder and COO Nicolas Brusson told the Kyiv Post.
According to data provided by Lazorenko, the joint market of Ukraine and Russia is the fastest-growing one for Blablacar, with about 1 million registered users. Another way to see how the service is progressing is by the number of offered rides. For the most popular directions, which are to/from Kyiv and to/from Moscow, there usually are about 3,000 offers in the next few days, Lazorenko said.
GiveMeALift is another ride-sharing company working in Ukraine. It was founded by Anton Moyseyenko, Oleksandr Zhovnuvatyi and Oleksandr Rybak from Kyiv. It’s similar to Blablacar, but is focused on transport within cities’ boundaries.
As of Nov. 17, the service had about 550 users, who had 4,096 rides since the beginning of September. Moyseyenko plans to boost the client base through introducing an iOS app and scheduled rides.
“We’ve got partner teams in Belarus and India that have the desire to launch GiveMeALift in their countries,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Dressing up
Dressboom allows women to exchange clothes in a fast and convenient way online. It uses a virtual currency to settle deals between people willing to sell their clothing.
“We’re a typical sharing economy project,” Dressboom co-founders Kateryna and Oleksandr Furtak told the Kyiv Post. “The goal of this project is for people to be able to afford something they couldn’t afford before. With our service, women can afford to get new clothes much more often.”
As of Nov. 25, the service had around 6,000 users from 200 Ukrainian cities, who made 3,500 exchanges since its launch in April. Dressboom has received pre-seed funding from the Ukrainian startup incubator Happy Farm and is considering expansion to the United Kingdom. As a first step in this direction, the startup went to showcase its service at the Web Summit 2014 that took place in Dublin in early November.
“The growth in Ukraine is slow. People aren’t used to sharing and don’t trust it,” Furtak complains. “We want to kick the idea around in Ukraine and get to markets abroad afterwards.”
Popularization through social media
While new Internet startups embrace sharing economy principles quite fast, people seem to be less willing to start using them right away. Blablacar’s Brusson, Dressboom’s Furtak and GiveMeALift’s Moyseyenko say that explaining the benefits of their services is crucial for further business development.
“We need to invest also in educating the people why (ride-sharing) is a great thing,” Moyseyenko said. “(Our goal is) not only to give a lift, but to build a carpooling culture.”
Furtak of Dressboom believes social networks are an effective catalyst for bringing the sharing economy into people’s daily life.
Kyiv Post contributor Andrii Degeler can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
