Spain’s ride-hailing market had an unusual structure for much of the 2010s. Two global platforms, Uber and Cabify, were competing for the same regulated territory. One local company held most of the licences both needed to operate. That company was Auro Travel.

The permits at the centre of this story were VTC licences, the legal instruments allowing private vehicles to carry paying passengers in Spain. For years they’d been treated as near-worthless by most of the industry. Betancourt López’s Auro story on EV Powered covers how he spent around 2015 buying them in bulk at roughly €5,000 apiece, while everyone else looked elsewhere. Alejandro Betancourt López accumulated more than 2,000 permits before the platforms arrived. By the time Uber needed to enter Spain at scale, Auro held the keys to legal road access.

The value chain play

His reasoning centred on chokepoint investing. Standard Oil controlled refineries, not wells. Onassis owned the ships that carried the oil rather than the oil itself. In Spain’s regulated ride-hailing market, the VTC licence was that chokepoint. Every vehicle a platform wanted on the road required one, and the supply was fixed by regulation. Demand was going to arrive from Uber and Cabify. The question was who owned the permits when it did.

“We knew that Uber was going to come to Spain,” Betancourt López has said, “and we started accumulating all the licences… it was a calculated gamble because we knew that the market was going to shift to the private riding industry instead of taxis.” His investment history, including the range of sectors and structures he’s worked across, is documented in his Crunchbase profile for Alejandro Betancourt López.

Operations at scale

By the time Auro had fully scaled, the company employed more than 3,500 drivers and held upwards of 3,000 VTC licences across Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Málaga. A division called Arrow leased permits to third-party operators. This turned the licence portfolio into a recurring revenue asset. Whether Auro’s cars were busy or idle on any given day, Arrow’s lease contracts kept the licences productive.

The operational complexity involved, matching each licence to a specific vehicle, managing driver certifications across multiple jurisdictions, coordinating with municipal authorities, served as its own competitive barrier. A rival with comparable funding would’ve needed years to replicate what Auro had built.

Cabify, a court ruling, and €220 million

Cabify came first with an exclusivity arrangement that made Auro the backbone of its Spanish operations. The deal eventually broke down. A dispute over terms was taken to the Spanish Constitutional Court, which ruled in Dec. 2024 that Auro could end the exclusivity agreement. Uber then bid €220 million for a 30% stake. The deal closed Feb. 28, 2025, structured as €180 million in equity and €40 million in debt.

Permits bought for €5,000 were now anchoring a company Uber valued north of €700 million implied. “When you take a risk,” Betancourt López has said, “you need to be completely aware of the risk you’re taking, with the consequences, and fully understand where you’re going to end up if it goes bad.” The downside of the Auro bet was measurable. The upside wasn’t. His approach to exactly this kind of asymmetric investment is discussed in a recorded interview on YouTube, and his full professional biography is at m.doyoubuzz.com/leopoldo-alejandro-betancourt-lopez.