Data and insights platform StudentCrowd bags £7 million in Series A funding round led by YFM Equity Partners
StudentCrowd has secured £7 million in funding to develop its products and accelerate the international expansion of its student accommodation data and insights platform.
Led by YFM Equity Partners and backed by the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, through fund manager Mercia Ventures, the Series A funding follows a first round in 2023.
Founded by Paul Humphreys and Pete Sisson, StudentCrowd is a UK student review platform and property data provider for purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). Since launching its platform, the company now lays claim to covering 100% of the UK PBSA sector, tracking more than 770,000 beds and over 55,000 tenancy types, underpinned by 4.3 billion+ structured data points refreshed weekly.
Alongside this, verified reviews have helped 14 million+ users choose the right higher education pathway while capturing sentiment data to strengthen the underlying dataset.
The investment will support the next phase of product development and commercial expansion. This includes scaling complete and granular PBSA inventory data across continental Europe, and extending into adjacent living sectors such as build to rent (BTR). There will also be development of the reservations functionality to help students move from research to booking within a trusted environment.
Humphreys says: "Our mission has always been to bring transparency to the student accommodation market – both for the students and for the sector. On the student side, we want every student to be able to choose where they study and live with confidence, powered by authentic, verified reviews from people with real experience. On the industry side, we have built a dataset that gives operators, investors and advisers the independent, accurate data they need to make optimal decisions.”
“This funding enables us to invest in the platform to better support decision-making for the students and the sector. While researching mainland Europe and the US, we discovered similar challenges and are working with launch partners to expand the platform into these geographies. In the UK, we are further innovating the platform to enhance data-driven decision-making."
Oliver Wheatley, Investment Manager at YFM Equity Partners, says: "Having tracked the business since 2021, what has really stood out to us is that Paul, Pete and the team consistently deliver on what they say they will do. They have built a genuinely impressive business on limited capital, and the quality of the product shows in the way customers talk about it and the impressive company metrics.”
“The international expansion is not a speculative bet – existing customers are already pulling them into new markets, which tells you everything about the strength of the underlying proposition. We're excited to partner with the management team and Mercia to support the next chapter of that journey."
2026 RTIH Innovation Awards
Data platforms will be a key focus area at our sister title RTIH’s 2026 Innovation Awards.
The awards are now open for entries and celebrate global retail technology innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
Our winners will be revealed at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London on Wednesday, 4th November.
Check out the 2025 winners here.
Our 2025 hall of fame entrants were revealed during a sold out event which took place at The HAC on 16th October and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by award winning comedian, actress and writer Tiff Stevenson.
In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “This is the awards’ fifth year as a physical event. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA’s HQ in the West End.”
“But I’m conscious of the fact that, to quote the legend that is Taylor Swift, You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby. So, this year we’ve moved to our biggest venue yet, and also pulled in our largest number of entries to date and broken attendance records.”
He added: “This year’s submissions have without doubt been our best yet. To quote one of the judges: The examples of innovative developments across both traditional and digital retail spaces were truly remarkable.”
