Seven million people in Ukraine use the French car-sharing platform BlaBlaCar, the world’s leading long-distance ridesharing platform with 90 million users in 22 countries.
The platform connects people who want to travel long distance with drivers going in the same direction and Ukraine is one of the company’s fastest-growing markets.
The French car-sharing service entered Ukraine in 2014 by acquiring local startup Podorozhniki, which had a similar concept to BlaBlaCar, offering inner-city and out-of-town trips, as well as commuting solutions for different companies.
Today Aleksey Lazorenko, founder of Podorozhniki, is the general manager in the Ukrainian BlaBlaCar office.
“The acquisition was a jackpot for all of us,” Lazorenko says in an interview with the Kyiv Post.
Ukrainians heavily rely on the carpooling service as an alternative to expensive train tickets or to owning a private car. Demand has increased steadily over the years, not counting the pandemic-stricken 2020.
Post-Soviet country
The merger between BlaBlaCar and Podorozhniki did not go off without a few difficulties. The negotiation process took nine months. Cultural differences played a role.
“There were really a lot of stereotypes about post-Soviet people, that we are quite closed off and have this bad mood,” Lazorenko says.
He had to explain to his French partners that the younger generation in Ukraine is much closer to the average person in Europe than their parents were, especially in the age of global connectivity.
“We are open to share our car seats with strangers,” he says.
It was BlaBlaCar’s first acquisition outside the European Union. Today Ukraine and Russia are the company’s fastest growing markets.
On the customer side, there is only one real difference between French and Ukrainian people, according to Lazorenko: “People here are really last minute.”
When planning their trips through BlaBlaCar’s platform, customers from countries like France, Spain or Germany always schedule their rides at least three or four days in advance.
In Ukraine, drivers as well as people who are looking for a ride, often publish it on the same day.
Lazorenko’s hypothesis is that higher levels of instability and uncertainty on the macro-level of a country means higher uncertainty on the micro-level.
Working for the French
The BlaBlaCar team is international. It consists of 700 people with 35 different nationalities, according to its homepage.
“I would not really say that BlaBlaCar is a French company, we are a global company, we work in a team with people from all over the world, from Ukraine, from Poland, from France, from Spain,” says Lazorenko.
He says that during a normal working week, BlaBlaCar Ukraine staffers talk to their international colleagues at least four times.
“Once you start to discuss your processes with people in Paris or in Poland, you realize that your view is actually quite narrow, and you start observing yourself from the outside,” he says.
Before the COVID‑19 pandemic, the whole team would meet in Paris once a year to discuss new ideas and strategies.
Lazorenko said he enjoys working with BlaBlaCar because of the trust and transparency ingrained in the company’s culture. He also found the flat hierarchy to be different from his experience with Ukrainian companies.
“In BlaBlaCar, we really have a horizontal structure… and that is amazing, because everyone in the team feels equal,” he says.
In the beginning, Lazorenko needed some time to overcome his shyness, saying that European people are more open.
Also, he cannot always keep up physically with his French colleagues.
“Probably this is not really about French people and France in general but about the team there… they presented a really impressive amount of physical power to combine fun with serious stuff,” he says.
“We go to bars and restaurants and have really a lot of fun until late at night. In the morning, from 9:30 we discuss very difficult things. But I can’t be like that, I need some time to recover.”
The motto “Fun & Serious” is one of the core values of BlaBlaCar.
The COVID‑19 pandemic restricted people’s ability to visit each other and took a toll on transport services like BlaBlaCar.
In France, BlaBlaCar had to shut down its service completely during the first lockdown in March 2020. The Ukrainian branch could still operate in a limited way and even experienced a peak in demand.
“During the lockdown people realized they need to get somewhere, (after) people reached their destinations, the spike disappeared and we had more or less normal activities with a little decrease throughout the year,” Lazorenko says.
The company cannot disclose exact numbers but the drop of activity in France was much higher than in Ukraine because of different approaches on the pandemic.
Sharing successfully
BlaBlaCar acquired Podorozhniki when Lazorenko and his team of three were on the search for investors to grow their startup, which was operating in Russia and Ukraine.
One day a big investor introduced the two companies to each other.
“I went to Paris for the first negotiations… and we realized that we are fully on the same page,” Lazorenko tells.
Today the Ukrainian office counts more than 70 employees.
At the end of 2019, BlaBlaCar Ukraine went beyond sharing trips with passengers and acquired Busfor, the largest aggregator of bus routes in post-Soviet countries, including in Ukraine.
Since February 2020, BlaBlaCar users can find and book convenient trips with fellow passengers or buy tickets for official bus lines in Ukraine and abroad.
The aim of BlaBlaCar is to have no empty seats in cars on the street, connecting people and contributing to the environment.
“It is a global trend of sharing economy which is really growing fast and really has a lot of sense concerning global warming, and not very normal consumption of resources of our planet,” Lazorenko says.
“I am really happy that Ukraine accepted the idea of BlaBlaCar, of sharing.”
