Crowdfunding ace as Andy Murray OBE invests in UK start-ups WeSwap and Perkbox

Tennis champion Andy Murray OBE has added two more businesses to his growing investment portfolio, backing innovative start-ups WeSwap and Perkbox via equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs.

The undisclosed investments mark the latest in a series for Murray, who has now invested in 17 early-stage businesses including food chain Tossed – founded by Young Gun Vincent McKevitt – and e-commerce fund Fuel Ventures; set up by MyVoucherCodes.com founder Mark Pearson.

A perks and benefits scheme, Perkbox launched in January 2015 and has over 300,000 paying customers including Deliveroo, British Gas, and BUPA with more than £14m generated in revenues since launch. This early success saw the start-up take second place in the Startups 100 index 2016 – the only index of its kind to recognise the most impressive new businesses launched in the last three years.

Perkbox: Chieu Cao and Saurav Chopra

Like Perkbox, WeSwap has also achieved great traction of late. A peer-to-peer currency exchange platform founded in 2013, WeSwap claims to have grown by 204% in the last year, welcoming over 200,000 new users.

WeSwap: Jared Jesner

Murray commented:

“I’m continuing to grow my portfolio through Seedrs and have tried to choose companies from different sectors as much as possible.

“I was interested in Perkbox as I employ a number of people through my own sports management company, the 77 Group, as well as a number of independent contractors like physios, coaches and trainers. I’m sure they’ll all be wanting to hear lots more about Perkbox!

“WeSwap was interesting to me because I travel so much around the world – I thought this was a really clever idea and could immediately see the gap in the market for this business to work”.

Seedrs co-founder and CEO, Jeff Lynn, added: “[Murray] is a great example of an investor who understands this asset class and the importance of building a broad investment portfolio, into which these two disruptive tech brands will add even more diversity.”