Earlier this week, Uber fired one of its senior executives, named Eric Alexander, for violating the privacy of the passenger who was raped by an Uber driver in India back in 2014. He has been let go from his role because he requested the medical records of the 26-year old female passenger. And do you want to know why?
According to the report, first printed by Recode, Eric Alexander, who was serving as the President of Business for the Asia Pacific region, obtained the documents on the pretext that he wanted to investigate the case way further. He traveled to India, specifically to obtain the medical records and because he believed that the same was fabricated. Yes, he believed it was a ploy by its arch-rival Ola to sabotage its India operations.
Speaking on the allegations brought to the forefront by Uber, an Ola spokesperson in a statement said:
It is a shame that the privacy and morals of a woman have to be questioned in an attempt to trivialise a horrific crime. It is despicable that anyone can even conceive an attempt to malign competition using this as an opportunity.
If this report were to be even remotely true, this is an all-time low on morality and a reflection of the very character of an organisation.
And it’s not like the investigation was only limited to Alexander himself. The report further mentions that he prepared a report to present and discuss it with the company’s CEO Travis Kalanick and SVP Emil Michael. They also talked about whether Ola had a hand in the said case — which is a shameless discussion to conduct and tell us more about the ride-hailing giant’s internal culture.
The same aforementioned culture, which is termed as the Bro Culture in Silicon Valley, has come under fire and questioned by even the company’s investors of lately. This is because a former female Uber employee published a blog post alleging that she was subject to sexual harassment by her seniors and the same was ignored by the Human Resources department– only because the senior was a valuable resource to them.
Uber has been faced with intense backlash for the same and Uber has conducted multiple internal meetings to understand the true nature of the problem. It was where Kalanick was bashed for the work culture of the company and he decided to call for an external independent investigation into the matter at hand. Now, Uber has fired nearly twenety executives and hired Francis Frei to manage and better the leadership and work culture at the company.
A similar culture has been established in the Indian offices of the company as well, according to multiple sources close to Economic Times. One of the source calls the culture s aggressive and challenging across countries. They commented on the hiring process of the ride-hailing giant as under:
During the hiring process and even after, employees are told to be arrogant or aggressive and defy the law in the spirit of innovation and pushing the boundaries.
This development comes at a time when Ola and Uber are embroiled in a fierce battle to capture a dominant market share in India. While the former had been leading the race, it had been struggling to pick fresh funds until a couple months ago. The company has now managed to raise capital from its existing investors, especially SoftBank, but a downgraded valuation of around $3.5 billion.
Ola has now ventured into the green energy, sustainable, and electric mobility space to get into the good graces of the government and drive Uber out of the country. The American ride-hailing giant has already lost ground in China, where it has now sold off the operations to its arch-nemesis Didi Chuxing. It is now diverting all of its attention to the South-east Asian countries and believes its capital dumping practices may help it fare well in the market.
