Uber's India rape scandal accelerated Travis Kalanick's downfall: Report

Following the December 2014 rape of the female passenger by an Uber driver, authorities of several Indian cities banned ride-hailing services from operating

The downfall of Uber’s co-founder Travis Kalanick from the post of CEO was accelerated due to the revelations that a senior company executive had obtained medical records of a 26-year old female passenger who was raped by an Uber driver in Delhi in December 2014.

In June last year, ReCode and Bloomberg reported that Uber’s then president for Asia-Pacific, Eric Alexander, had illegally obtained and had carried medical records of the rape victim. This was done with the intention to prove that that the rape had been a setup by Uber’s biggest Indian rival Ola to undermine the US company.

A Bloomberg BusinessWeek report that narrates the series of events that led to the ouster of Kalanick from Uber, quotes a senior company executive as saying that the revelation was "like a bomb (that) went off inside the company.” Employees apparently stayed at home and there was a feeling that the company had gone too far.

News that Alexander had discussed his theory of the rape being set up with Kalanick and other top executives, including Chief Business Officer Emil Michael, pushed the six-member Uber Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to send a letter to the board to appoint an independent board chairman and fire Michael.

The Uber ELT had also suggested that Kalanick take three months leave of absence, according to the Bloomberg report, a leave from which he would never return as the CEO of the company he built.

Following the December 2014 rape of the female passenger by the Uber driver, authorities of several Indian cities banned ride-hailing services from operating. The move forced both Uber and Ola to improve their driver background verification tests and also led to them introducing panic buttons for passengers within their apps.

Some states in India are continuing to fight to get ride-hailing players to install mechanical panic buttons within cabs that function independently of a user’s smartphone. The issue also sparked off a drive to regulate ride-hailing players in India, along similar lines as being practiced at a global level.