Ridesharing app BlaBlaCar has raised $200 million in a series D round of funding led by Insight Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital and participation from Vostok New Ventures, reports YourStory. The company will use the investment to accelerate growth in Europe and focus on existing markets like India. BlaBlaCar entered India in July last year, a couple of weeks after raising $100 million led by Index Ventures, with the participation of existing investors Accel Partners, ISAI and Lead Edge Capital. Interestingly, the company had said then that emerging markets like India, Brazil and Turkey where the “transport infrastructure is poor”, could eventually become bigger markets for it than Western Europe, where the platform debuted. BlaBlaCar had also raised $10 million in funding led by Accel Partners in 2012 and ~$140,000 in funding led by ISAI in 2011. BlaBlaCar, which is run by the Paris-based company ComutoSA, allows travellers to find drivers who are heading to the same destination (intercity only), and then connects them via mobile phone or email in order to arrange a shared ride. Through this, drivers gets a chance to offset the trip cost, while users pay lesser for the ride, in comparison to what they would’ve paid for public transportation. As of now, the platform claims to be present in 700 cities in India with over 3,50,000 seat bookings in the last 6 months. Internationally, the platform claims to have over 20 million members across the 19 countries it is present in. IRCTC tie up: In…
