Wahanda sells majority share to Recruit Holdings

Beauty booking site Wahanda has secured a further $46 million (around £30m) investment from existing investor Recruit Holdings. In addition Recruit has also acquired a majority stake in the company as part of the deal.

This deal makes Recruit the sole investor in Wahanda and represents a successful exit for the other institutional investors. The additional funding by Recruit will be used to further build and accelerate Wahanda’s European position. The company expects to be in eight countries by the end of June this year and has further expansion plans in the coming months. It will also be used to support a major recruitment drive to build on the company’s 210-strong workforce

Wahanda’s management team will continue to own a significant stake in the business and remains fully committed to continuing to drive the success of the online bookings platform, which has seen 300% year-on-year growth.  Klaus Nyengaard, former CEO of online food ordering service Just Eat, will continue to sit on the board as co-chairman, having been chairman of the company since 2013.

Lopo Champalimaud, CEO and founder of Wahanda, commented: “With its Hot Pepper Beauty business in Japan, Recruit has a wealth of experience in this space and understands how to scale our business. Our ambitions are aligned and the capital investment, expertise and knowledge that Recruit provides will enable us to continue on our growth trajectory, truly cementing our position as the leader in our field.”

As part of its European expansion strategy, Wahanda acquired German equivalent Salonmeister in October 2014 and, just two weeks ago, Austrian app Beautycheck. In January, it completed the acqui-hire of the LemonLabs team, a Lithuanian mobile app development agency.