Uber Co-founder Launches Fund for Emerging Innovation in China, India

Cab aggregator app Uber’s co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick announced on March 8 that he has created a fund called 10100 that will focus on job creation in China and India.

Kalanick said that he has been making investments, joining boards and working with entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations. The fund, pronounced Ten-Hundred, will be working on his passions, ideas and big bets.

The fund will be overlooking his for-profit and non-profit work. It will be aimed towards large-scale job creation, with investments in real estate, ecommerce, and emerging innovation in China and India, he said.

The non-profit will focus on education and the future of cities.

Some news… pic.twitter.com/urFBrb9aCV

— travis kalanick (@travisk) March 7, 2018

Kalanick is still a board member at Uber after resigning from the CEO’s post in July 2017. He has reportedly had a strong control over the day-to-day operations despite stepping down but the recent deal with SoftBank diluted his power by giving two seats on the board to the Japanese company.

Uber has had a rough year in 2017. After Kalanick stepped down, the company, which had been in the eye of many controversies, has been reeling even under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. In February, Uber and Alphabet-owned Waymo reached a surprise settlement following a lawsuit about a trade secret theft. Uber also weathered a massive cyber-attack, which it tried to cover up, that exposed data of 57 million riders and drivers.

Waymo got 0.34 per cent of Uber’s equity at the company’s $72 billion valuation, which works out to a value of around $245 million. Waymo had originally sought a $1 billion settlement last year.

In September, Uber said that it would review its Asian operations after facing a U.S. federal probe to check whether the company broke laws against overseas bribery. The charges surfaced after the U.S. officials were notified about payments allegedly made by staff in Indonesia.

In December, an Indian origin woman from Texas sued the company for accessing her medical files after she filed a case against the firm when a cab driver in India raped her in 2014. They reached a settlement worth an unknown amount. The Indian woman had filed a civil case against the company, its former CEO Travis Kalanick and former executives Eric Alexander and Emil Michael. Alexander was said to have accessed the files from the police in India and shown it to Michael and Kalanick.