Property tycoon Nick Candy’s ventures tap taxpayers for start-up support cash

Nick Candy and his wife Holly Valance

Credit:  Karwai Tang

Property mogul Nick Candy has emerged as a beneficiary of the Government’s start-up bailout package, after two of his ventures tapped taxpayers for cash during the pandemic.

Both Blippar and ticketing and payments firm Vibe Group used the Future Fund scheme to raise cash in 2020, filings on Companies House revealed.

Blippar, the augmented reality start-up, revealed it had secured £3m in the middle of the year, with half having come from the Treasury. The company, a former billion-dollar start-up, is in the process of rebuilding its operations, having collapsed into administration in 2018. Its intellectual property was bought by Candy Ventures for £450,000.

Candy Ventures is also a leading investor in Vibe Group, the ticketing start-up which also filed for administration in 2018, and was later bought out by its chief executive Luke Massie.

According to Companies House filings, Vibe agreed a £850,000 unsecured convertible loan agreement under the Future Fund scheme in the summer. 

Candy Ventures and Blippar declined to comment, whilst Vibe did not respond to requests for comment. 

The way the scheme works is that the Government’s cash has to be matched by private investors, with those loans almost all converting into equity on a company’s next funding round.

It could mean the Treasury ending up with equity stakes in thousands of businesses. Since the Future Fund was kicked off, almost £1bn worth of taxpayer cash has been distributed to start-ups, significantly more than the £250m originally earmarked.

Concerns have, however, emerged over the transparency of the scheme, with investors warning that viable businesses were not accessing the cash, but instead businesses that had been struggling. Stephen Page, the chief executive of Britain’s most active seed-stage investor SFC Capital, said it has meant “zombies have stayed in business”.

The Treasury has rejected such claims, saying: “To qualify for the scheme and ensure taxpayers money is protected, companies must secure match funding from private investors and have an existing track record of raising investment.”