Major investor Benchmark sues former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

Kalanick stepped down as the CEO of Uber in June.

Bechmark, which is a Silicon valley venture capital firm, argued that Kalanick withheld several information about Uber before he was empowered to appoint three more board seats in June 2016.

Following a revolt from major shareholders of the company, Travis Kalanick resigned as Uber CEO.

However, Kalanick remained on the tech giant’s board of directors.

Reports suggested five out of major shareholders demanded his resignation, which included venture capital firm Benchmark. He held meetings with a few officials to finally announce his decision to step down.

The shareholders had felt that there was an immediate need for Kalanick to step down as CEO, since the company needed a better leadership.

In early June, Uber was marred in a controversy as a top executive of the company obtained the medical report of woman in New Delhi allegedly raped by its driver in 2014. Later the executive was reported to be fired.

The fired executive Eric Alexander, the president of business in the Asia Pacific, had then showed the medical records to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and SVP Emil Michael. In addition, numerous executives at the car-hailing company were either told about the records or shown them by this group, the report said.

The 26-year-old Delhi woman  was allegedly raped by an Uber driver in 2014 during a ride in the capital. She had filed a lawsuit against the company, saying that Uber's "hollow" safety and driver screening practices was the cause for her unsafe situation.

The woman had said that despite the San Francisco-based company claimed that it maintained high safety standards, there was no practice of adequate screening of its drivers which put the safety of commuters at risk.

She had filed a suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. 

Image: By Heisenberg Media /Creative Commons.