Paris, 12 December 2024
Founded in 2012, Obilet is a pioneering Turkish startup that played a key role in digitizing the bus market in the region by aggregating the supply of more than 500 operators. It also provides data distribution to B2B partners and ticketing infrastructure software to bus operators. Taking into account its diversified offer, such as train and ferry tickets alongside its core bus services, Obilet distributed approximately 45 million tickets across 50 countries in 2024, confirming its position as one of the world’s leading travel and tourism platforms.
With this announcement, BlaBlaCar is making further progress in its strategy to become the world’s leading platform for sustainable ground transport. Its successful multimodal strategy, deployed across Europe and in Brazil, has demonstrated strong synergies between its long-distance buses and carpool offerings. Both means of transport provide an affordable and low-carbon travel solution to travelers, covering complementary networks and making mobility accessible to all.
Obilet will maintain its operational autonomy and continue its current activities and projects, with its founders, Ali Yılmaz and Yiğit Gürocak, remaining in their roles as Co-CEOs.
About BlaBlaCar
BlaBlaCar is the world’s leading community-based travel app enabling 27 million unique active members a year to share a ride in 21 countries. Its technology matches drivers with empty seats with passengers heading the same way, so they can share the cost of the trip. With the mission to be the go-to marketplace for shared travel, BlaBlaCar combines carpooling with bus journeys from over 5 000 operators to offer a wide choice of affordable and sustainable travel solutions, all in one app.
In 2023, BlaBlaCar’s trusted community connected 2,4 million meeting points worldwide and enabled 104 million human encounters. Carpool drivers saved 513 million euros, and all BlaBlaCar’s mobility services contributed to avoiding 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
About Obilet
Founded in 2012, Obilet is an end-to-end travel ticketing and reservation platform listing intercity & international bus, airline, and ferry carriers, as well as hotels and car rental companies. Obilet is the indisputable market leader in Turkey and the region across both B2B and B2C segments, with over 40 million B2C transactions performed annually, 400 bus carriers using its IMS software, and the largest B2B distribution inventory for bus ticketing. Having initiated its international expansion efforts, Obilet aims to further strengthen its position as one of the largest travel/tourism platforms in the world. Prior to the transaction, Obilet raised capital from top-tier global investors including Bek Ventures (formerly known as Earlybird Digital East) and EBRD.