Uber founder Travis Kalanick resigns as CEO under investor pressure
"I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investor's request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight,” Kalanick said in a statement obtained by the New York Times.
Kalanick will remain on the tech giant’s board of directors, the Times reported early Wednesday.
Kalanick on June 13 took few days leave to grieve his mother who died in an accident.
Kalanick founded Uber back in 2009 and later developed into it into a transportation giant, operating in different parts of the world.
Reports suggested five out of major shareholders demanded his resignation which included venture capital firm Benchmark. He held meetings with few officials to finally announce his decision to step down.
The shareholders felt that there is an immediate need for Kalanick to step down as CEO, since the company needs a better leadership.
Earlier this month, Uber was marred in a controversy as a top executive of the riding giant obtained the medical report of a raped woman in New Delhi by its driver in the year 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 companys claimed that it maintained high safety standards, there was no practice of adequate screening of its drivers which puts at risk the safety of commuters.
She had filed a suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Image: By Heisenberg Media /Creative Commons
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