Doorsteps.co.uk

Doorsteps.co.uk was founded in 2016 by Akshay Ruparelia while he was still in sixth form, and its youthful founder story made it one of the more widely covered online agents of its generation. The business itself did not outlast the wider online-agent shakeout.

What Happened

The company was later taken on by private equity backer Upside Capital, and Ruparelia stepped down from an active role in June 2021. Three years before its collapse, Doorsteps had been turning over roughly £1m a year with about 60 staff and stated ambitions to reach £6m by 2020 — targets it did not hit. As the property market softened, Doorsteps went into liquidation on 31 October 2022, handled by Begbies Traynor’s Colchester office.

Companies House filings showed Doorsteps owed £538,786.88 to creditors at the point of collapse, including Rightmove and HMRC. The fallout extended past the liquidation itself: in the first quarter of 2023, The Property Ombudsman excluded Doorsteps from its redress scheme after the collapsed brand failed to pay a £1,000 award it had already been ordered to pay a vendor.

Why It Matters

Doorsteps’ story separates the founder narrative from the balance sheet: a well-publicised launch and an ambitious growth target don’t guarantee the unit economics hold once a private equity owner is looking for a return and the housing market turns. The unpaid Ombudsman award is also a reminder that when an online agent collapses, redress obligations to individual customers can simply go unmet — there’s no automatic safety net once the company itself has no money left.