The global short-term rental market size was valued at USD 99.38 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.1% from 2022 to 2030. In the recent years the industry went through seismic turbulence from its glory and fast development before 2020 to almost agony in 2020-2021 during covid burst and victorious recovery in 2022, unbelievable roller coaster.
In 2020 in the middle of the covid crisis we met Sebastian, Kamil, Marta, Aniela and Wojciech group of great founders with rare mix of entrepreneurship, marketing and operational skills. Their roots in hospitality business and understanding of clients’ needs and behaviours positioned them to achieve meteoric success but the covid crisis put their lifetime efforts at risks. We came up with the idea that bValue Fund will provide bridge financing to fund the gap in the cash-flows so long it’s needed to weather the storm. As strong as the storm was how surprised we were how short it lasted, and with our support the company came back to fast growth and profitability.
Today Renters.pl is a leading provider in Poland of short term-rental services for home owners. The Company offers over 2,000 rental apartments in largest Polish cities and tourists spots. It offers its apartments base through most popular OTA’s such as Airbnb, Booking or Expedia as well as their own booking platforms.
bValue Fund was instrumental in helping the Company to set-up corporate governance and management reporting, structure internal processes and implement IT systems. The Fund fully exits the investment with solid return of 8.0x return on money invested. This is first exit from bValue Fund II [vintage 2020] and good prognosis for Fund II overall performance.
“I met Sebastian and Kamil many years ago, but we only talked about Renters.pl in the middle of the covid crisis in 2020, before then they were not looking for investors. I saw strong conviction in their voice and behaviour that this business will recover and will grow fast which was not so obvious back then. We closed the deal quickly and in friendly manner, there was no time to lose on negotiating terms as the business required most of our attention,” said bValue Fund managing partner Maciej Balsewicz.
“I sincerely congratulate Enterprise Investors on this investment. Renters.pl seems to be a perfect platform candidate to consolidate fragmented, fast growing and highly acquisitive market with many adjacent and complementary business ideas. This seems to be a first case in Poland of largest private equity fund acquiring company backed by seed stage VC investor. This is another example of alternative path to traditional VC playbook, to build strong business with little capital and leapfrog multiple rounds of financing directly to final exit” adds Balsewicz.
bValue Fund is a specialised growth equity investment firm that partners with tech and tech-enabled businesses in Central and Eastern Europe. The Fund is investing across two distinctive strategies seed and growth always aligning its interest with outstanding founders. The firm manages 100m EUR growth equity fund which is a leading source of growth capital for ambitious entrepreneurs in CEE, investing 5-15m EUR in single investment. The firm also manages 20m EUR in seed funds and seeded over 30 companies in the region being a first investor in such companies as: Tidio, Spin.ai, MoreGrowth, YourKaya, Senuto, Shoplo, Fluentbe and PushPushGo among others. In seed it invests tickets of 100k eur to 1m eur and is looking for global chalangers in their markets.