The Midland entrepreneur who lost out in the final of The Apprentice has secured £170,000 investment for the business spurned by Lord Sugar on the BBC show.
Nick Holzherr has secured the investment into his recipe shopping app Whisk, in a deal brokered by Midven, from a consortium of investors.
He would have secured £250,000 for a 50 per cent stake from multi-millionaire business mogul Lord Sugar had he won the show, but the capital funding deal was based on a valuation of £870,000 – £370,000 higher.
Former Birmingham Young Professional of the Year (BYPY) winner Mr Holzherr said he was already in talks a supermarket about the application.
He said the funding deal was a boost for the business, as it now has backing from established digital entrepreneurs, and allowed him to recruit a team to make the app a reality.
He said: "I always knew the business model developed for Whisk was sound and that the technology to power it, although complex, could be built.
"The investment we have received from this consortium provides us with the ability to recruit an expert project team to build the app, with an anticipated launch date of September.
"From a commercial perspective, we are in talks with one of the major supermarket to link with Whisk from the outset to ensure the proposition is operational from the start.
"We also have a number of brand partners interesting in product placement opportunities, which is key to delivering our anticipated affiliate revenue."
The 26-year-old came up with the idea for Whisk, an online system that allows people to convert recipes into shopping lists that can be bought through online stores with just one click, more than two years ago.
He also rejected Lord Sugar’s advice to head to America with the business – favouring Birmingham as its home.
The firm’s new investors are Nate Macleitch, chairman of cloud computing company Quickblox, Midland entrepreneur Doug Scott and C7 Medical founder Peter Dines – who become non-executive directors – and Guy Morris, who sold his digital marketing business Media Ingenuity in 2011 with a valuation of £34 million.
Also entering the firm is technologist Craig Edmunds, who joins as co-founder, who led the team who developed the transactional functionality of Lastminute.com and Expedia.com.
Mr Scott said: "Quite simply, blending recipes with online shopping is a space in the online world which remains untapped, but certainly won’t for much longer.
"Whoever gets to market with a working application first is likely to dominate the arena, which is why I chose to invest in Whisk."
