New financing for Frank Students – changes in the ownership structure

Frank Students is a company founded and owned by us students together with Kilroy. Students know the company mostly from benefits, discounts and the digital student card.

Frank’s goal is to make student life better. During the last years we have invested heavily on tech development in order to make the service good for students. In the future, the tech platform we’ve built enables lots of good things for student life in addition to the traditional student status verification.

Now Frank is raising half a million of growth funding to ensure this good development, to strengthen growth and to expand. The investor is our current partner KILROY.

We have gone through Frank’s future plans thoroughly with both current owners and potential new investors, and the reception has been positive. It’s great that Kilroy, who knows Frank inside out and wants to build it together with students, expressed interest to invest in the company more than before.

The arrangement is common for growing companies and we get to be proud that the company built by students has such potential. It is even possible that Frank might one day reach for international markets. However, improving student life in Finland in cooperation with student unions is the core of Frank now and will also be in the future.

Along this arrangement there will be changes in the ownership structure of the company. It has been most important to us to ensure that students have a say in the company also in the future. KILROY, too, is very committed to students having a substantial share and a strong impact in the company. National student unions own 30 % of the company in the future and the impact of students is ensured also in shareholder’s agreement, which secures our ability to influence in the important decisions regarding the company’s future and functions.

What kind of an impact does this have on a student’s everyday life? Mainly it will give Frank the opportunity to expand the service and come up with new kind of ideas to build a better student life.

P.S. The data regarding students and the membership information of the student unions will remain 100 % in the ownership of student unions. We will keep a good eye on the development of the Minedu’s (Ministry of Culture and Education) KOSKI-system but its deployment is not yet current, so for now student status is verified from student union membership data. However, we have agreed, that if student status verification one day opens for everyone regardless of student union membership, it will be possible to join the student union via Frank’s service. This will open new possibilities for us to reach the students who are not currently buying the membership of the student union or the student card.

More information:
Secretary general Eero Manninen, contact info

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