The Scandinavian Visma Group has acquired Holded, the Barcelona-based startup behind the fastest-growing cloud ERP & accounting software in Spain.
By joining the Visma family, as part of an impressive €120 million acquisition deal, Holded will benefit from Visma’s international experience to boost product development and consolidate its position as the leading cloud ERP provider for small businesses in Spain.
Javi Fondevila, Co-founder of Holded, stated: “We believe that Visma is the perfect partner at this stage of our journey. Holded will get the support and experience from one of the leading European companies in our field. This will allow us to double down on our mission of helping small businesses and accounting offices to manage their business operations.”
Founded in 2016, Holded has become one of Spain’s leading cloud ERP solutions in less than four years. It has succeeded by offering the first cloud ERP that was truly designed for small businesses to manage invoicing, accounting, CRM, inventories, projects and HR, with an attractive and easy-to-use interface. In 4 years they managed to onboard more than 80 000 businesses. Holded closed a Series A funding round of €6 million in 2019 and a Series B funding round in the beginning of 2021. Last year, we featured Holded as one of 10 Barcelona-based startups that continue to grow fast despite the current crisis.
Bernat Ripoll, Co-founder of Holded, commented: “Our vision is to use product and technology as the pillar to grow and make customers happy. We want to create the best platform to help small businesses and accounting offices digitise and automate to boost productivity. Visma is definitely the best partner to do it.”
Traditionally, ERPs have been mostly designed for and sold to big enterprises, making it difficult for small business owners and their teams to benefit from such a powerful technology that centralises and automates business operations.
“We are highly impressed with what Holded has accomplished. They’ve built a robust product with satisfied customers, an engaged team and a very professional way of running the business. We see that Holded is the future of accounting in their market and we couldn’t miss this opportunity to join forces with such a strong partner and set foot in Spain. We see great possibilities by combining the best ERP product in Spain with Visma’s network of competence. Together we want to help Spanish small businesses, entrepreneurs and accountants to succeed,” said Visma’s CEO Merete Hverven.
Holded plans to hire more than 300 people to keep improving its products and services and consolidate its position as the fastest-growing company in the cloud ERP & Accounting segment in the Spanish market. The Barcelona-based company will continue to operate its business activities as an independent organisation, and its founders Javi Fondevila and Bernat Ripoll will continue managing the company.