BlaBlaCar ride sharing service arrives in India

BlaBlaCar, a French car pooling service, has started operations in India.

BlaBlaCar connects users travelling between cities to other each other using a smartphone application (currently available for Android and Apple devices). Through the app, users with similar destination can share a ride for a journey and expenses, thus travelling in a cost-effective manner.

It is mandatory for users to sign up using a Facebook account and their profiles are authenticated by BlaBlaCar. After the journey, the users can leave ratings for each other.

The BlaBlaCar app can be used to find a ride, contact the owner of the car through private messaging or phone and plan the journey. Car owners have to put up details of the departure and arrival points, date and time of departure and price per co-traveller. During the journey, the co-travellers have to pay the car owner.

There is also a function that allows a user to display how much he/she chats in the car. The three levels are:

• Bla: Not very chatty
• BlaBla: Enjoys a good chat
• BlaBlaBla: Won't shut up

This can help users choose their co-travellers according to their comfort levels.