Dechert has advised Index Ventures, Accel Partners, ISAI, and Lead Edge Capital in their roles as investors in BlaBlarCar’s USD 100 million fundraising.
"It's been a very active market for French technology companies that are aggressively seeking to expand internationally, and Dechert has been advising on a number of successful fundraisings and cross-border IPOs," said Dechert Partner Matthieu Grollemund, who was the lead attorney for the firm on the matter.
Launched in 2006, BlaBlaCar is a service of long distance commuters linking drivers and passengers wishing to share the cost of a single journey. BlaBlaCar employs 150 employees, including a hundred in France, and currently has 8 million members in 12 countries.
According to Dechert, BlaBlaCar intends to use its fundraising to accelerate its international expansion, the next target countries being Turkey, India, and Brazil.
Index Ventures is a multi-stage international venture capital firm with deep sector expertise based in London, San Francisco, and Geneva. According to Dechert, "since 1996, they’ve teamed up with entrepreneurs in more than 30 countries who are using technology to reshape the world around us. The companies they’ve started include Aegerion, asos, Climate Corp, Criteo, Dropbox, Etsy, Genmab, Just Eat, King, Hortonworks, MySQL, Nasty Gal, Pure Storage, Skype, SoundCloud, Sonos and Supercell, among many others."
Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has offices in Palo Alto, London, New York, Bangalore, and also in China via its partnership with IDG-Accel. Accel has invested in over 500 companies, many of which have created their own markets, including Angry Birds (Rovio), Atlassian, Cloudera, ComScore, Dropbox, Facebook, Groupon, and Spotify.
ISAI represents more than 70 entrepreneurs and aims to finance and support Internet companies with strong potential funds. Beyond the founders, AISI has more than eighty entrepreneurs who invested in one and/or both of its funds. Alongside the founders ISAI includes more than 70 individual investors in the ISAI Fund, including founders, executives or former executives.
Lead Edge Capital invests in Internet companies with high potential entrepreneurs with whom the fund is associated. Their portfolio consists of Alibaba.com, Anaqua, Appirio, Bazaarvoice, BlaBlaCar, Branding Brand, Drilling Info, Ensighten, Kapost, Marketo, Mindbody, Monetate, Refinery29, Serena & Lily, Spredfast, Veeva Systems, Xamarin and more.
As part of this transaction, Index Ventures, Accel Partners, ISAI and Lead Edge Capital were advised by Dechert, whose international team was led by Grollemund in Paris and Partner Craig Godshall in Philadelphia, assisted by Paris-based Associate Xavier Leroux and Philadelphia-based Associate Matthew Rothman.
