Chase India to drive BlaBlaCar’s public affairs mandate

BlaBlaCar, a Europe based intercity ride sharing service that has recently launched for India  has appointed Chase India, the public policy and government affairs division of Avian Media for a government affairs brief as it launches its service in India.

Commenting on the latest win, Nitin Mantri, CEO, Avian Media & Director, Chase India said, “Through Chase India we aim to create effective platforms for facilitating interactions between government and industry to create and deliver strategies that provide clients with a sustainable competitive advantage.”

The brief for Chase India includes assessing and managing regulatory risks, identifying the relevant stakeholders and engaging with them, carrying out regulatory management and ideating agenda based advocacy campaigns.

 Raghav Gupta, India Country Manager, BlaBlaCar said, “We have offered the public affairs mandate to Chase India for their ability to engage with relevant stakeholders in ways that are both compelling and effective. We look forward to working with Chase India on delivering a successful advocacy and government relations campaign.”

While the car ride sector is a vibrant one with service providers ranging from Ola Cabs, TaxiForSure, Meru Cabs and of course Uber, the recent controversy surrounding Uber and the resulting regulatory changes, means that Chase India will have its task cut out navigating BlaBlaCar.

Following the case of an Uber driver molesting a Delhi passenger, the Government of India has clamped down on taxi aggregators and car share services maintaining that these are taxi services and must register as such. Uber on the other hand has maintains it’s an app and not a cab service.

Recently Uber launched a pilot campaign with mobile safety and auditing service Safetipin, starting in New Delhi, India to gather road safety data.