INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Like it or loathe it, Uber changed the face of modern urban transportation by providing a relatively pain-free way to order a car to take
But the company’s growth has done more than catapult Uber into the ranks of the biggest (and most-watched) tech companies: it’s helped
open the door to a new raft of transportation startups.But while Uber’s aggressive growth has been fueled by huge fundraises and hefty
losses, its approach is not the only way ahead
Blacklane, a transportation-on-demand startup from Berlin, provides a template for another kind of strategy, one based on minimal outside
funding, a focus on very specific customer segments and slow growth that relies on partner ecosystems to achieve global reach.“We’ve
We have always wanted to be a channel player, largely playing a local game,” said CEO Jens Wohltorf in an interview in Berlin earlier this
month.Some have described Blacklane as something similar to what Uber was like when it first started out, and on the surface, there is some
truth to that: users order cars through its app, and the vehicles are always “black cars;” larger sedans and comfort-oriented vehicles
But unlike Uber, which from its earliest days always traded on the idea of providing five-star service at an affordable price, Blacklane
aims at the higher end of the market, targeting corporate workers, executives and those who have the means to pay extra for higher levels of
service when they travel.And its success has led to a whole new level of interest in the company.“In the first couple of years, VCs always
asked me the question of how we would react to the big ride-hailing players
How do we compete, and how could we be more similar?” said Wohltorf
“Today, it’s changed 180 degrees
Now the question is ‘what’s your strategy to be different?'”Indeed, for those building or thinking about building or investing in a
transportation-on-demand startup, it’s worth considering Blacklane’s example: for all of the outsized nature of biggies like Uber and
Didi, Blacklane, with around $77 million in funding, is much closer to the average player in the world of
transportation-on-demand.Collectively, nearly $81 billion has been raised by 428 ride-sharing startups, according to data from Crunchbase
But it’s a very uneven spread: about 75% of that has been highly concentrated in about ten companies led by Uber and Didi (respectively
raising around $25 billion and $21 billion), with the list rounded out by the likes of Grab, Lyft, Ola, Chinese trucking company Manbang,
and bike companies like Ofo, HelloBike and Meituan.If you take the rest of the funding and distribute it equally among the rest of the
field, it works out to a significantly more modest $48 million per startup — with many raising far less than that (and some still
significantly more, if not $25 billion more).The most recent financials for the company cover 2017, when it reported revenues of 44 million
euros and a net loss of 10.5 million euros
From what we understand, it’s managed to keep that net loss rate steady in 2018 and 2019 while revenues have continued to grow.This also
makes Blacklane a relatively rare thing in the ride-sharing world: a quiet but healthily growing startup.The message here is that for the
rest of the field, and for any other founders looking at building a transportation or on-demand-distribution-of-anything startup, there is
an interesting lesson to be learned about whether it’s possible to build a long-term company in this space without going large like an
Uber, and if so… how.The concept for Blacklane first came to cofounders Jens Wohltorf and Frank Steuer in 2009 — the same year Uber was
conceived, as it happens.
