Around 2015, a stack of permits sat gathering dust in a Spanish government office. They were VTC licences, paperwork that let private cars carry paying passengers. Almost nobody wanted them. The things were being offloaded for as little as €5,000 each.

Alejandro Betancourt López read those same permits differently. Where the market saw regulatory scrap, he saw the raw material of a business that hadn’t arrived yet. So he started buying. Quietly, licence after licence, until his company Auro Travel held more than 2,000 of them.

From Bureaucratic Relic to Prize Asset

That bet looked strange at the time. Taxi unions had spent decades keeping VTC permits marginal, and for years the effort held, because the licences carried so little commercial value that most holders treated them as dead weight and let them sit. Serious money wasn’t paying attention. Fewer buyers still were purchasing in bulk.

That gap is exactly what Betancourt López wanted. Ride-hailing was coming to Spain, the platforms would need licences, and the supply was finite. Control enough of it, and you’d set the terms once Uber and Cabify arrived.

The Payoff

His wait ran nearly a decade. By November 2022, Uber and Cabify were both circling Auro with acquisition bids of around €200 million each. Permits nobody had wanted were now assets everyone needed.

The deal closed on 28 Feb. 2025. Uber took a 30% stake in Auro for €220 million, split as €180 million in equity plus €40 million in debt. Licences once traded at €5,000 apiece were now folded into a company the world’s biggest ride-hailing platform paid nine figures to partly own. For Alejandro Betancourt López, a thesis built in obscurity had finally landed in public.