London-based events company Pollen has been placed in administration following not finding an investor. The demise of Pollen is just a few months after it secured $150 million (PS124) in capital.
The business, which been granted taxpayer-funded funding through the federal government’s Future Fund, had been looking for a buyer to purchase the entire company.
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However, according to an email written by one of Pollen’s co-founders , and read through Sifted the its parent corporation StreetTeam Software Limited is “appointing administrators to restructure after we were not able to sell the company in its entirety”.
The revamp will see the college travel business separate from the events company that is geared towards consumers, Pollen.
The writing seemed to be in the sand for Pollen for several months. Sky News reported on Tuesday that the company was looking for buyers for several weeks following making an inquiry to Goldman Sachs to assist with the purchase.
On Wednesday morning on Wednesday, the Telegraph revealed that Pollen could not find a buyer, and that it was able to hire Kroll as a consultant to “administer its restructuring”.
Pollen struggles
The month of April saw Pollen has raised PS124m as part of the Series C funding. In spite of this, Pollen has been struggling to pay the operators, employees and refunds to customers who have cancelled events.
The company was founded in 2014 by the brothers Callum and Liam Negusfancey, Pollen collaborates with music and event organizers to market personalized experiences. The company stated that it has been affected by the Covid-19 ban worldwide and more recently, the economic slump.
The cancellation of the event has caused anger among those who complained about being not able to receive the money back.
UKTN has been not able to contact Pollen to discuss the matter.
Based on Crunchbase, Pollen has received an aggregate sum of $238.5m (PS197.3m) until now.
It’s not the only event platform having difficulties, as the competition Hopin cutting its headcount of employees by 29% in the last month.
