BelkaCar (Carsharing)

JSC "Carsharing," the BelkaCar brand is a Russian company that launched the car sharing service in October 2016. The service allows you to rent a car through the application for any time: for a short trip to the store and for a long trip out of town. The user does not need to pay for gasoline, car wash, insurance and city parking. The all-inclusive concept covers these costs and the user pays only for the time the car is used. The company's task is to make BelkaCar an alternative to a personal car.

Performance indicators

2023: Revenue growth by 22.5% to RUB 5.29 billion

At the end of 2023, BelkaCar car sharing earned 5.29 billion rubles in revenue, which is 22.5% more than a year earlier. The company's net losses in 2023 amounted to 780.2 million rubles, almost doubling compared to the cash losses of a year ago at 395.3 million rubles. Such data are contained in the financial statements (according to RAS), which JSC Carsharing (BelkaCar brand) published in early April 2024.

As of October 2023, there were more than 5 thousand cars in the BelkaCar fleet. At the end of September of the same year, the company purchased more than 100 Haval Jolion cars for Moscow and St. Petersburg. The company did not disclose the cost of the purchase.

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In 2023, BelkaCar expanded its geography of presence in: the Russia service was launched in Kaliningrad, which became the 9th location of the operator's presence. In Kaliningrad Chery , Tiggo 7 PRO crossovers are presented without application, which can be rented at the "Long leases" tariff.

In addition, in mid-2023, BelkaCar began working in Kazan. You can also rent a car there at the Long Lease tariff. Haval Jolion crossovers are offered in Kazan. The rental price is from 4490 rubles.

We expanded to the Golden Ring, got acquainted with new car brands, rolled out new features in the application, and most importantly, that we did all this with you!, BelkaCar said in a statement following the results of work in 2023.

By the end of 2023, the BelkaCar service was available in, To Moscow,, and Sochi Krasnodar St. Petersburg Kaliningrad and Kazan.^[1]

2021: Losses - 324.5 million rubles, revenue - 4.7 billion rubles

At the end of 2021, BelkaCar's revenue reached 4.7 billion rubles, an increase of 94% compared to 2020. Net losses of the car-sharing service during this time decreased by 82% - from 1.8 billion to 324.5 million rubles. The company published such data in accordance with Russian accounting standards in April 2022.

BelkaCar associates revenue growth with a full-scale service update, the launch of a new application, as well as the addition of a line of package tariffs. In addition, the service is a new product strategy that allowed the transition from a single-product model of a car sharing operator to a technology company, BelkaCar said.

According to the report for 2021, the total number of BelkaCar car leases exceeds 740 thousand per month. There are more than 5.5 arenas per day per car in Moscow. By the end of 2021, the size of the fleet amounted to 4.7 thousand cars, the press service said.

The average lease duration in Moscow at the end of 2021 was 99 minutes against 62 minutes in 2020 and 42 minutes in 2019. The increase in fleet load has become more uniform due to the mixed work schedule and partial remote work.

The number of active users of the service in 2021 also increased by 23% - from 1.3 to 1.6 million. The average check has grown by 60% and today amounts to more than 500 rubles.

{{quote 'We associate this primarily with an increase in travel range, when, due to the remote mode of operation, many moved outside the city, - explained to TASS in the car-sharing company. }} By April 2022, BelkaCar has 5 thousand cars available. For 5 years, the company's fleet has grown 50 times, BelkaCar entered the top 10 largest car-sharing companies in the world and the top 3 operators in Russia (the company's own data). The service registered 1.6 million people, the number of trips on BelkaCar cars reached 35 million. BelkaCar operates in Moscow, Sochi, Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, Anapa and Gelendzhik.^[2]

2020: Revenue growth by 7%, to 2.4 billion rubles

BelkaCar's revenue at the end of 2020 reached 2.4 billion rubles, which is 7% more than a year earlier. The company's revenues grew despite the ban on the operation of car-sharing services in Russia in April-June, when restrictive measures were introduced in the fight against the COVID-19 coronavirus.

2020 was not an easy year for the entire Russian car sharing, quarantine caused several players to leave the market. However, we managed to cope with all the challenges of the pandemic period and find additional growth points, significantly increasing the load on our cars: in the second half of the year we broke internal records for the number of simultaneous leases. In addition, the average trip length has increased, as Muscovites massively moved to remote work abroad, "said Loriana Sardar, CEO and one of the founders of BelkaCar.

BelkaCar revenue up 7% in 2020

By the end of 2020, the number of cars in the BelkaCar fleet amounted to more than 5 thousand units. The company plans to increase this number to 6.5 thousand units. The number of users registered in the service by the end of the year reached 1.5 million people. In July-December, 39% more trips were registered than in the same period in 2019. The total number of trips during the existence of the service exceeded 25 million.

According to BelkaCar's own data, the company in the Russian market ranks third in terms of the number of cars and trips made, and is one of the leaders in terms of load, BelkaCar's share in the number of trips for the year was 19%. So, in Moscow, users make almost 500,000 trips a month, and the average driving time of the car has increased and amounted to about 8 hours a day.

In 2020, BelkaCar began operating in three new cities - Novorossiysk, Anapa and Gelendzhik. In 2021, the company's expansion will continue both in the Krasnodar Territory and in Russia as a whole, the company promises.^[3]

BelkaCar digitalization

2021

Presentation Data "Cloud Business Mobility - BelkaCar Hands-on Experience," Andrei Kalinin CTO, BelkaCar

History

2024: German investor gets 5 years in prison in BelkaCar stock divestment case

German investor Ralph Novak was sentenced to five years in a general regime colony on June 3, 2024 for stealing BelkaCar car sharing shares. The court also ordered him to pay a fine of 800 thousand rubles. The verdict of the Tushinsky court of Moscow says that Novak was found guilty of fraud committed on an especially large scale or by an organized group. Read more here.

2023: Boris Zimin wanted in BelkaCar stock case

On January 9, 2023, the Ministry of Internal Affairs put on the wanted list the son of the founder of VimpelCom Dmitry Zimin, businessman and philanthropist Boris Zimin (recognized in Russia as an individual foreign agent). Read more here.

2022

A court in Moscow arrested a German investor in the case of embezzlement of BelkaCar shares for €47 million

At the end of August 2022, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow arrested in absentia the co-founder and executive director of the Swiss investment company Bryanston Group Fabian Kreuher. A German citizen on the wanted list is accused of fraud in the case of embezzlement of shares of the BelkaCar car-sharing service. Read more here.

Appointment of Dmitry Potapov as CEO of Belkacar

On August 29, 2022, Belkacar, a car-sharing service, announced a change in CEO. He was appointed Dmitry Potapov, who previously worked in the company as an operating director. He replaced Loriana Sardar (co-founder of the project), who continued to work at Belkacar as a managing partner, as did another founder of the service, Elena Muradova. Thanks to the redistribution of operational tasks, they will be able to focus on the development of new products and directions, in accordance with the long-term strategy, Belkacar noted. Read more [[|here]].

Installation of digital audio guides for car travelers in MTS Music

MTS PJSC, a large Russian company providing digital, media and telecommunications services, and the BelkaCar car-sharing service announced on August 26, 2022 the launch of a series of free audio guides for motorists on the MTS Music platform. The route of the first audio guide will pass from Moscow to the Yasnaya Polyana estate museum in the Tula region. Closer to the fall of 2022, the MTS Music collection will be replenished with a number of guides along the Black Sea coast of the country. Read more here.

2019: The company of the founder of VimpelCom became the main owner of BelkaCar car sharing

At the end of October 2019, it became known about the change of the main owner of BelkaCar. It was Coneplace, a subsidiary of the investment company BMT Private Equity Limited, part of the group of companies created by the founder of VimpelCom Dmitry Zimin.

BMT bought BelkaCar's stake from the Swiss Swiss company Winterberg Group (formerly the Bryanston Group), thereby becoming the majority shareholder. The parties do not disclose the exact size of the share and the amount of the transaction.

It became known about the change of the main owner of BelkaCar, it was the company of the founder of VimpelCom

Winterberg Group received a majority stake in BelkaCar during the first round of investments, which took place in 2017. BMT then became one of the minority shareholders of the service.

BelkaCar explained the change of the main shareholder by increasing competition in the Moscow market, plans for aggressive regional expansion, which began consolidation, as well as the end of the Winterberg Group investment cycle.

Carsharing has grown from a small, innovative start-up to a big, growing business. New playing conditions in the market require new scales of financial support. At this stage, the presence as a major shareholder of a large private equity fund such as BMT is becoming more relevant, BelkaCar said in a press release.

In March 2019, Kommersant the newspaper "" wrote about BelkaCar's plans to sell part of the business. Among the potential investors, the publication also named Volkswagen the fund (Sistema VC included in). AFK Sistema According to sources, Kommersant the car-sharing service then estimated itself at $100 million.

Representatives of the Sistema_VC "repeatedly communicated with the founders" of BelkaCar and watched the development of its business, said Vice President for Investments of the Fund Iskander Giniyatullin, stressing that the fund does not conduct substantive negotiations on investments in BelkaCar.^[4].

2018: Revenue - 1.37 billion rubles, losses - 386 million rubles

In 2018, the revenue of Carshering (BelkaCar) amounted to 1.37 billion rubles, net losses - 386 million rubles.

See also

• Car sharing market of Russia
• Yandex.Drive and X Yandex.Carsharing
• Delimobil
• CARiOT (Carsharing Cariot)
• BelkaCar (Carsharing)
• Volvo Cars (Sunfleet, car sharing)
• YouDrive (Carsharing)
• Urban car sharing (Flekskar)
• CarTrek

Notes