A behind-the-scenes look at Uber Files at Explained session today
Since its launch in India nine years ago, Uber has aggressively expanded in the country, disrupting and reshaping the cab-hailing industry, steering itself through rough waters in the wake of the Uber rape case in 2014 and increased Government scrutiny to transform itself into a $44-billion global transportation giant with operations in 72 countries.
An investigation by The Indian Express, in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) offered a rare glimpse into the company during its tumultuous days of expansion steered by flamboyant and brash co-founder, Travis Kalanick, to reveal that the company used stealth technology to bypass regulators; tapped into a sprawling lobbying network; and aggressively cut corners as it drove through loopholes in law and regulation.
Ritu Sarin, Executive Editor (Investigations) of The Indian Express, Dean Starkman, Senior Editor of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and David Pegg, Investigations correspondent of The Guardian, London, will take you behind the scenes of this global investigative project at the next session of Explained Live on “Behind the Uber Files” on Monday at 6 pm.
They will be in conversation with Rakesh Sinha, Executive Editor (News Operation) of The Indian Express. They will take you through their findings of the Uber Files, a leak of 182 gigabytes of data that were obtained by The Guardian newspaper from Mark MacGann, a whistleblower who provided the newspaper with 124,000 company records.
The records are from the 2013-17 period, and are mainly internal company emails (83,000), as well as memos, presentations, and WhatsApp messages.
The investigation carried out by The Indian Express shows the cavalier manner in which the company’s top executives reacted to the allegation of rape by an Uber driver in New Delhi in December 2014.
While officially expressing shock and empathy, the executives in internal communications tried to put the blame on faulty background checks on drivers carried out by Indian government officials. The panel will take you through the tumult within the company over the Delhi rape incident and the damage-control thereafter.
They will also take you through the myriad tax and regulation issues and the manner in which Uber tackled them, and make sense of the challenges faced by the company in India.
The panel will also talk about how the company employed various lobbying tactics, including signing around a dozen Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) in different states — agreements that remained mostly on paper.
