Unable to initialize Chrome driver with serenity version 2.3.12

[sumit-global]

@wakaleo Getting "net.thucydides.core.webdriver.DriverConfigurationError: Could not instantiate class org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver
Caused by: net.thucydides.core.webdriver.DriverConfigurationError: Could not instantiate new WebDriver instance of type class org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver (Trailing char < > at index 4: true ). See below for more details.
Caused by: java.nio.file.InvalidPathException: Trailing char < > at index 4: true " trying to initialize chromedriver.

Note:

Kept chromedriver.exe into project root folder
passed below value in serenity.properties file
driver=chrome
drivers.windows.webdriver.chrome.driver=chromedriver.exe
Using serenity-cucumber6
Getting "Uninitialised WebDriverFacade" value for driver.
ChromeBrowser version: 88.0.4324.104
ChormeDriver version: 88.0.4324.96
Please let me know in-case of any other additional information required

[wakaleo]

Can you provide a project to reproduce this issue?