Last year, Student Rents listed a securities offering on Crowdcube, raising £466,172.55 from 179 investors. The company was selling equity in the firm at a pre-money valuation of £4.5 million. According to the offering page, Student Rents claimed over 300 paying agents having matched 11,000 students to properties with 14,000 rooms posted to date.
The company explained its ambitions as follows:
“We’re on a mission to digitalise the student rental market by providing a purpose-built SaaS platform allowing users to manage the entire tenancy process on one platform in the £4 billion student accommodation market.”
The company said that it had been recognized by IT Awards & UK Enterprise Awards in 2022 as the Best student rentals platform.
All of this sounds great, but recent reports indicate that Student Rents fudged details on its investor deck, so much so, that Crowdcube is now suing the firm to get investor’s money back. A report by UKTN earlier this month indicates that fake employees were included on the investor deck, and a claim that a previous company launched by the founder was acquired by Airbnb – now said to be bogus.
According to a second report by UKTN, Crowdcube is in the process of recovering funds contributed by investors via its platform by suing the firm.
“Crowdcube said it is “in the process of fully refunding” the 170 investors who participated in the funding round,” said the publication, adding that Crowdcube apparently conducted an investigation and uncovered that Student Rents fabricated some information, including bank statements, adding that they were “deeply disappointed” in the outcome. No Crowdcube investor is expected to lose their money.
On another note, it appears that JUST £23,173 was actually invested via the Crowdcube platform, as the offering page incorporates money raised money off platform.
CI has reached out to Crowdcube for a statement.
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