Best Startup
A List Group Holdings is a real estate investment firm creating value with international commercial property in the United Kingdom, United States, and the rest of Europe with 15,940 units worth £1,775 billion.
Since our establishment in 2017, we have focused on the international global community.
To acquire commercial properties with tenant demand in university towns and urban city centers, creating long-term value for our shareholders and boosting our total global property portfolio with monthly income cash-flow units with the potential appreciation in value.
Tell us about yourself?
I am a Cape Malay Capetonian from the beautiful mother city of Cape Town, located at the southern tip of Africa. Since the ’90s, during my childhood, I ‘loved’ playing monopoly.
The idea of owning property and getting paid in cash is a version of myself making business decisions today.
My father noticed my love for cash-flow businesses. He then slowly exposed me to the real life of monopoly, which manifested in my career in the financial sector.
Since then, I have been passionate about looking after my health and building innovative trendy cash-flow businesses.
Yes! without your health not being 100%, you cannot build a great business. Between 2015-2017 I, and my team, noticed consumers and businesses started to trust technology.
With this ascending spike in trust, our focus was on building businesses on technology in the financial sector.
We started A List Group Holdings in 2017 with $2.5 Million pre-seed debt funding with 250 commercial units. Since then, we have grown exponentially into a global property portfolio in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the rest of Europe.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
During 2008 the world economy went through a global recession that crippled markets.
Fast forward a few years later, we experienced another intended lockdown of ‘markets’ that are still struggling for over 24 months.
2008 has given me the tools to overcome the current economic struggles I wish I could have used in my previous business commitments.
What problem does your business solve?
Our business model gives access to international commercial real estate to new and existing ‘investors’ that are not in a position to commit to high-end commercial deals on a global scale without the headaches of owning property.
We acquire international commercial properties and unlock value to create sustainable assets through our proactive management approach to property investment.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Real estate investing core cash-on-cash property portfolios have always been a safe place for investing in commercial assets.
However, it was only reachable for high net worth individuals and institutions. To grow our institution, we needed to scale with outside help.
This approach has afforded us support from partner institutions that is like-minded and committed to the same idea.
We then created one of the first real estate investment subscriptions in 2017 that assisted crowdfunding from retail and institutional investors of all walks of life to scale our property portfolio to what it is today.
We called this a win-win situation which helped our company assets grow to keep shareholders’ equity value rising and to acquire value-added properties to keep up with our occupier demands.
What is your magic sauce?
We can sum this up into two topics.
Our investment criteria: Our institution invests in properties usually overlooked by other institutions.
These properties, in turn, can be added to A List Group Holdings’ portfolio of properties so that we offer good prospects for income and value growth to our portfolio and occupier’s demands and shareholders’ equity value rising.
The team specialises in off-market corporate acquisitions, which are tax efficient and have minimal purchase costs to absorb.
Investor portal: Our occupiers’ can invest side by side with our institution in cash-on-cash properties.
A List Group Holdings offer a service where you not only pay for your monthly leasing invoices but also earn a return on those invoices by purchasing a real estate subscription or shares in A List Group Holdings.
In turn, it ‘keeps’ our occupiers invested in our properties and builds a global portfolio which grows with our occupiers.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Our vision ‘is’ to always be one of the leading real estate investment firms recognised internationally with commercial property, generating attractive total returns while growing a sustainable portfolio of assets that adapts to changing occupier demands.
Our internal investment team and with advice from external consultants has now been tasked with investing in greener buildings so that we tackle climate change.
Climate change is real and should be taken seriously by institutions.
We hope other institutions take our company as an example in the movement against climate change because the commercial industry should play a ‘huge’ role in ‘achieving’ zero emissions.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
When a spanner is thrown in the wheel while moving forward, we pause and look at the opportunities surrounded by our company that can keep us moving forward.
So during the pandemic, markets were hit by the small to medium businesses, which ‘was’ suddenly forced to stop operations. It ‘wasn’t’ good for business because we had loyal occupiers that were early and excellent payers.
We were not about to let them go off with notices. Unfortunately, some weren’t able to settle their invoices in fiat currency. We needed to work with our occupiers and look for solutions. We had to innovate by going on a different path for invoice collections.
So we saw an opportunity where we created payment collections via cryptocurrencies. Now, remember cryptocurrencies are volatile, and we had to move quickly and settle quickly in fiat.
Our banking and crypto partner payment platforms enabled us to be in a position. To build a system around our collection department for those businesses which can settle invoices with cryptocurrencies.
It was a tough transition in the beginning. It has helped our invoices get settled via cryptocurrencies which will be, implemented for many years.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
You can invest in shares from https://alghs.com, enter into a single real estate subscription from £4.99 PCM here (https://alghs.com/a-list-group-holdings-real-estate-subscriptions/), or if you’re interested to become an investor relations associate, looking to sell A List Group Holdings company shares and subscriptions, apply here (https://alghs.com/careers-a-list-group-holdings/).
Any inquiries contact hello@alghs.com
Please follow A List Group Holdings socials:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alistgroupholdings/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/algholdings
