India-France Business Summit: Piyush Goyal meets Blablacar CEO in Paris

INTERNATIONAL DESK: Car Pooling application BlaBlacar Co-founder And Chief Executive Officer Nicolas Brusson met with Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal in France’s capital Paris on Tuesday. Goyal and Blablacar co-founder discussed new opportunities and the tech systems in India.

‘The main discussion was what BlaBlacar car can actually do and how it can grow in India. He (Commerce Minister) gave some good ideas about how to develop even more in India,” BlaBlacar CEO said about his meeting with Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal while speaking to ANI.

Explaining what the Blablacar is, Nicolas Brusson said, “Blablacar allows drivers to share their car when they drive between cities. It is an intercity carpooling app. For example, if you drive from Mumbai to Pune and you have two or three empty seats in your car, you can go on the app, and set up your profile, after the verification, you can start offering empty seats when you travel between the two cities.”

He further explained that passengers can book those (empty) seats and share the cost of the journey.

“We have 4 million active users in India as of 2022, and it’s roughly doubling every year. There are some regions like Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi and Chandigarh. There are corridors or regions where carpooling actually makes a lot of sense because public transport is too crowded or expensive,” he added.

He said that they are working on building more trust and reliability features in the product so that people feel trustful.

Regarding the other such applications, he said that Blablacar is sometimes confused with the services of Uber and Ola. But Uber and Ola are very different because it is professional drivers typically for shorter distances within a city. Whereas in Blablacar, car owners are the drivers themselves. They just offer a ride once a month or a week when they do a trip.

“So it’s a non-professional service versus a professional service,” Blalacar CEO said while speaking to ANI.

Speaking on the expenses one might have to bear, he said that because it’s car sharing, it’s ten times less expensive on a per kilometre basis other than cab service applications.

“Motorization is going up rapidly in India and we have created more trust features in the product so that people would feel it’s a safe and reliable product. And in terms of transport, people move around a lot in India,” he said while pointing out the expansion opportunities in India.

“India is the fastest, largest growing economy,” he added.

Speaking on the Indian economy, he said, “I think it’s very good. After having the meeting Minister, I realized as a foreign company that we are welcome in India. It is a very big market. Though we have 4 million users in India as of 2022. Yet, compared to the size of the market and the potential, it is very tiny because it’s a big and growing market.”

He said that the technology ecosystem in India has always been very strong. Hiring engineers in India has always been easy.

“There are lots of technology providers in India. India is a very large market and it has a very good business ecosystem making it relatively easy to do business in India,” he added.

He further added that it is easy to scale tech products in India. And consumer adoption is much faster than in Europe.

The business summit and CEO roundtable are being organized by the Embassy of India in Paris in partnership with Medef, CII, Business France and IFFCI.

400-plus participants have registered for the business summit and have shown tremendous enthusiasm.

Minister Goyal is scheduled to meet with French business leaders across various sectors and attend a CEOs roundtable. Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal is leading the Indian delegation at the India-France Business Summit, commemorating 25 years of India-France friendship, on Tuesday in Paris.

Goyal and Olivier Becht, France’s Minister delegate of Foreign Trade, Attractiveness and French Nationals Abroad will co-chair the India-France Business Summit. (ANI)