Revolutionise Your Industry By Adopting A Platform Business Model For Your Brand

In 2019, French startup BlaBlaCar’s revenue grew by 71%. If you’ve never heard of this startup, it’s either because you haven’t caught up to the carpooling trend yet or are not European.

BlaBlaCar, which was created in 2006, is a long-distance ride-sharing marketplace on which drivers offer rides from one city to another across France and Europe, and where passengers can input pick-up and drop-off points while checking prices and reviews of the drivers and vice versa.

With over 80 million members – both drivers and passengers – registered on its platform, BlaBlaCar’s originally small and simple concept stemmed from closing the gap between drivers travelling alone in their cars and bearing high fees in tolls and gas and passengers trying to find cheaper and friendlier ways of travelling than by bus or train. Their business model has effectively revolutionized the transport marketplace.

One of the key factors to their success is attributed to their adoption of a platform business model. This article aims to pinpoint some of the advantages this model presents for organizations in order to be more customer-centric, offer different brand touchpoints and ultimately grow sales and revenue.

Exchange of information: users interact to define what is needed from the business. For example, if you are a passenger looking to hire a ridesharing service such as Uber, you will input your location and the platform will display the availability and approximate location of the drivers, their ratings, and the cost of the ride. The passengers can then decide whether they want to continue with the booking based on the information provided.

Exchange of goods or services: This refers to the nature of goods or services being exchanged. If you are in the tourism industry and register your hotel on a third-party booking platform such as Agoda, it will be a win-win situation for both your brand and users. Indeed, you will benefit from the larger outreach of that third-party platform by getting bookings from new customer segments while users will be able to find accommodation at a lower cost and compare easily your hotel with others within a few clicks.

Exchange of currency: After the goods or services are traded between users, an exchange of currency occurs. It can be of monetary nature but also of other nature such as a review or a referral. For instance, if you offer online classes or certifications such as Coursera, a rating on the quality of the curriculum is considered an exchange of currency, as it may affect whether future users choose to use your services.

Conclusion & takeaways

Many business platforms have emerged in recent years, but grasping the important theories and reflecting them in their platforms is the cornerstone for success. Uber, Airbnb, and BlaBlaCar, to name a few trailblazers, have shown that new layers of connectivity, of services and devices, have helped them remain leaders in their industry and continue servicing the evolving needs of consumers. In BlaBlaCar’s case, its recently added bus operations demonstrate how the core of the platform has remained the same while additional features and offers have helped build and leverage a larger community of members who have found the latter to be relevant to their needs. Newer platform business players such as real estate software Property Raptor and organic lifestyle platform Orghive, epitomize the importance of the key principles discussed above for a successful platform. In essence, if you are seeking to bring your business to the next level, harnessing the power of a business platform will be a worthwhile long-term investment.