A Birmingham tech entrepreneur who created an online platform to help companies with HR matters has sold the venture to a US group. Air HR was launched by Nick Holzherr in 2016 and offers services such as people records, time off management, expenses tracking and analytics reporting.
It primarily serves small- and medium-sized businesses and has more than 3,000 users across the UK. He has now offloaded the business in an undisclosed deal to Texas-based payroll software company KarbonPay which operates in 24 countries.
The news comes three years after Mr Holzherr sold his other main company Whisk to Samsung. Launched in 2013, Whisk is a nutrition site that enables users to browse recipes based on factors such as personal taste and budgets then add a recipe to their meal plan.
Mr Holzherr pitched the business to Sir Alan Sugar when he appeared on the 2012 series of hit BBC show The Apprentice.
He said: “Payroll is the number one requested feature by Air’s customers but has always been too challenging for us to build into Air. Now, with this acquisition, we can finally make these features available for our users.
“By leveraging KarbonPay’s systems, our users will be able to perform automated calculations for payroll. KarbonPay’s strategy to build a global platform fits really well with what we are trying to build with Air and I’m excited how the two will work together to build a winning proposition within HR software.”
KarbonPay’s chief executive Brad Price added: “Nick and the team at Air have done a remarkable job building a simple-to-use, beautiful platform – it’s now our charge to take that good work and expand the product’s offerings and reach with our global solution.”
