Blacklane: Premium ride-hailing made in Germany
In recent years, the wave of so-called ride-hailing apps initiated by Uber in 2009 — digital platforms that bring together supply and demand for a wide range of transportation services — has been a major driver for VC funding in the global Travel & Mobility Tech landscape. From Uber and Lyft, both de facto public companies by now, to less known ride-hailing giants such as Grab (Singapore), DiDi (China) and Go-Jek (Indonesia), the segment remains by far the biggest bet of venture capitalists in the mobility context. Considerably smaller but growing at a high speed are two German players: mytaxi, which hails conventional cabs across Europe and now a subsidiary of Daimler, and Blacklane, which specializes in the high-class chauffeur business and is also an investment of the Stuttgart-based automotive group.
Blacklane was founded in 2011 by former BCG Principal Dr Jens Wohltorf and CTO Frank Steuer. They now lead a team of over 400 employees, who are mostly based in Berlin-Schoeneberg and make up one of the biggest local Travel & Mobility Tech companies. Blacklane arranges chauffeur rides via the web and smartphone in over 300 cities across 60 countries and especially to and from 500 airports worldwide. Similar to Uber and others, the company positions itself as an on-demand service. Looking closer, it pursues a different model: Blacklane rides are booked in advance, just as with the competitor MyDriver that was recently integrated into the new one-size-fits-all-app of car rental giant Sixt.
The customer enters the route in advance and gets a fixed all-inclusive quote that never surges. The available vehicles are licensed chauffeur vehicles: “All of our chauffeurs are commercially licensed and insured and are only on the road in vehicles from premium manufacturers. We serve longer distance and our guests are spending almost an hour in the car on average. Therefore, we’re marketing a completely different full-service product than taxi or ride-hailing services with private drivers,” explains Jens Wohltorf, founder and CEO of Blacklane.
Tech boosts asset utilization and lowers prices
The start-up primarily addresses frequent business travelers with a certain demand for comfort and reliability. As usual in ride-hailing, Blacklane does not operate any vehicles. Instead, it acts as a broker for local chauffeur companies.
Wohltorf remarks: “The DNA of our company includes using technology to deliver the best possible experience to our guests. This is partly attributable to our software, which brings together the supply of chauffeur service providers around the world with the demand of global travelers. Our partners are mostly small- and micro-entrepreneurs who often struggle with low capacity utilization as well as with a lack of global marketing and sales capabilities. Blacklane’s technology drastically increases this utilization and boosts the revenue of our partners. In return, our guests benefit from prices that are significantly lower than those of legacy providers.”
In terms of price, Blacklane positions itself well above normal taxi rates, but considerably below conventional airport or hotel limousines, which can quickly add up to three figures per trip. It is conceivable that Blacklane will eventually leverage its international reach, geared towards the particularly solvent business traveler, to broker further transport alternatives in the near future. While revenue in Germany does not even account for 10%, 50% of Blacklane’s revenue is generated in Europe, 30% in the United States and 20% in the Middle East and Asia.
According to Crunchbase, Blacklane has raised an impressive 82 million Euros in venture capital, including strategic investors like Daimler and the Arab conglomerate Alfahim. Since the business continues to expand over 100% per year, the company is still not yet in the black: this year, Blacklane will launch in at least 20 new cities across Africa and Asia, for which the company says it has ten to twenty million Euros at its disposal. In light of these investments, a further financing round is not improbable. Within the next three years, however, the company considers an IPO, probably motivated by the dizzying valuations of Lyft ($25 billion in March 2019) and Uber ($90 billion anticipated this week).
From your office right to the boarding gate
Blacklane operates in an environment that is more competitive than ever: premium transport options (so-called “Black Cars”) tailored to business travelers can now be ordered in many corners of the world from Uber and similar providers. As is often the case, one possible approach to differentiation is service: “Our chauffeurs, for example, always wear a dark suit, load your luggage, open the door and have a completely different service mentality than taxi or ride-hailing drivers,” says Wohltorf.
If you order an airport pickup, the Blacklane driver greets you with a pickup sign directly at the gate exit and guides you to the vehicle. “Especially those who travel a lot on business will appreciate it when they don’t have to worry about the logistics of the trip because the Blacklane chauffeur will be waiting at the exit with a pickup sign,” Wohltorf adds. “But there’s still plenty to do at the airport itself. Since last year, we also offer, in addition to our chauffeur service, the airport concierge service Blacklane PASS.” With this service, the concierges even guide the Blacklane passengers through fast track immigration or airport security to ensure a smooth end-to-end-journey from the pick-up location in the city to the respective boarding gate — with an optional stopover at a lounge, if needed.
Highly interesting segment for airlines
According to the company, about two thirds of Blacklane’s business — such as transfers or airport services — are airport-related. From an airline perspective, airport transfer services are particularly relevant: the combination of a premium flight experience with equally high-end onward transport to the final destination is a logical step, even if the airports still play a decisive role when it comes to seamless travel.
In general, and across all segments, airlines are slowly but surely trying to catch up with the ride-hailing revolution at their doorstep. Thereby, the corresponding and scalable linkage at the technological level remains the major challenge — one which the Lufthansa Group and the Lufthansa Innovation Hub are tackling with the establishment of their company yilu in 2018.
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