The €5,000 Permit That Became a €220 Million Asset: How Alejandro Betancourt López Built Auro
A stack of permits sat unused in a Spanish government office around 2015. These were VTC licenses, Vehículos de Turismo con Conductor, administrative artifacts of a transport framework built around taxi dominance. Holders couldn’t sell them for more than €5,000 each, and most observers treated them as regulatory relics.
Alejandro Betancourt López bought them, methodically and quietly, by the thousand.
A Permit Market Almost No One Was Watching
Spain’s transport sector operated under one of the most controlled regulatory frameworks in Europe. Taxis held near-total dominance of paid passenger transport. VTC permits existed on paper but generated minimal commercial activity. The ratio of VTC licenses to taxi licenses was capped, routes were restricted, and the system kept private hire below a fraction of taxi volume.
Alejandro Betancourt López has described it in an EV Powered feature: the permits were originally conceived as “a compliment to the taxi drivers that they see at the time, no purpose for it.” The market for these licenses was thin, illiquid, and uninteresting to serious investors. He bought into that disinterest.
Reading the Inflection Before It Arrived
Underneath the calm, conditions for disruption were already forming. Uber had launched in San Francisco in 2010 and was expanding internationally. Cabify, the Madrid-based competitor, had started in 2011. Both companies operated on the same model. Riders and drivers connected through a mobile app, which bypassed the dispatch system entirely. Both would eventually need legal mechanisms to operate in Spain. The VTC license was the only such mechanism that existed under Spanish law.
“When we started the travelling business in Spain, Auro, we knew that Uber was going to come to Spain and we started accumulating all the licences,” Alejandro Betancourt López told EV Powered. “It was a gamble, but it was a calculated gamble because we knew that the market was going to shift to the private riding industry instead of taxis.”
Building a Fleet Around the Permits
Owning licenses was only the first step. Auro Travel had to translate paper into a functioning transport business: vehicles, drivers, technology, and operational infrastructure across multiple cities. The company built out methodically: Madrid first, then Barcelona, then Valencia and Málaga. Each new license was matched with a corresponding vehicle and certified driver.
At full scale, Auro employed more than 3,500 drivers and held upwards of 3,000 VTC permits. Regulatory compliance across multiple Spanish jurisdictions served as a barrier to competitors. Even a well-funded rival would have needed years to replicate the position. Alejandro Betancourt López also created Arrow, a division that leased permits to other transportation companies, turning the license portfolio into an additional revenue stream, which produced income regardless of Auro’s own daily ride volume.
The Deal That Validated the Wager
November 2022 brought competing acquisition bids from both Uber and Cabify, each reportedly near €200 million. The deal was closed on February 28, 2025, when Uber acquired a 30% stake in Auro for €220 million, comprising €180 million in equity plus €40 million in debt, as detailed by EV Powered.
Permits that had traded at €5,000 apiece now sat inside a company Uber valued highly enough to commit €220 million for less than a third of it. Alejandro Betancourt López’s wager was made roughly a decade earlier, when almost no one was paying attention.
