Around 2015, a pile of permits sat untouched in Spanish government files. These VTC licenses, the credentials that let private cars carry paying riders, were selling for as little as €5,000 apiece, and almost nobody wanted them.
Most people saw paperwork with no future. Alejandro Betancourt López saw the raw material of a market that hadn’t arrived yet, and he started buying while the rest of the trade looked the other way.
Buying what nobody wanted
His company, Auro Travel, accumulated more than 2,000 permits in the early going. That holding later grew past 3,000 licenses matched to a roster of over 3,500 drivers. Each license had to pair with a single vehicle, so scaling the fleet meant grinding through inspections, certifications and city-by-city rules.
That slog became its own protection. A rival with money to spend still faced years of administrative work to copy what Auro had stitched together.
The supply was sealed
The bet rested on a quirk of Spanish law. The government caps private-hire licenses at one for every 30 taxi permits, a ratio fixed in 2015 just as demand for app-based rides began to stir.
Frozen supply met rising need, and the asset had only one way to move. “We started accumulating the licenses and it was a gamble, but it was a calculated gamble,” Betancourt López recalled, “because we knew that the market was going to shift to private riding industry instead of taxis.”