After obtaining the necessary antitrust permits in Ukraine, French carpooling service BlaBlaCar has finally acquired Busfor, a bus ticket reseller with Ukrainian roots operating across Eastern Europe, the companies announced on Dec. 12.
The French company would not disclose the price it paid for Busfor.
The integration of Busfor’s products will start on BlaBlaCar’s Ukrainian website at the beginning of 2020. BlaBlaCar aims to enable bus ticket sales on its webpage in conjunction with the company’s existing carpool services.
Busfor’s flagship product Busfor GDP, a system for booking, distribution and sale of bus tickets, has been tested in operations throughout Eastern Europe.
This is the second acquisition for BlaBlaCar in Ukraine. Back in 2014, when the company first tapped the Ukrainian market, it acquired Ukrainian startup Podorozhniki to build on this company’s success as a carpooling service.
Podorozhniki’s co-founder Oleksiy Lazorenko later became BlaBlaCar’s country manager in Ukraine.
BlaBlaCar is currently valued at $1.6 billion.
Commenting on the BlaBlaCar’s purchase of Busfor, Lazorenko said that the merger helps to create “a unified, user-friendly marketplace by supplementing carpooling rides with bus tickets.”
“We want each intercity trip to be available within two clicks on a smartphone,” Lazorenko added.
Illya Yakushevskiy, Busfor’s founder and CEO, said that he was “especially proud that the technologies created by Busfor team would allow using bus rides for the multimillion community of BlaBlaCar passengers.”
