Who Owns HOLY?

HOLY was founded in Berlin in 2020 by three friends who had known each other for close to twenty years. Jost and Horsch came from TU Munich; Nass had spent years at a marketing agency in New York. The shared complaint was that soft drink choices forced a tradeoff between taste and ingredients, with mainstream energy drinks like Red Bull built on sugar and cans.

The first product, launched around April 2021, was HOLY Energy, a powdered energy drink mix sold direct to consumers, positioned initially at the gaming audience. The powder format did several things at once: slashed shipping weight versus cans, eliminated most single-use packaging, and let the brand price per serving far below canned energy drinks.

Creator marketing drove early growth in the DACH region and France, using YouTube and Twitch partnerships that made HOLY one of the most visible German influencer-backed brands. The brand expanded into HOLY Iced Tea and later HOLY Hydration, broadening from energy into a general better-for-you soft drink platform.

By 2023 the company had sold more than 10 million drinks, passed 200,000 customers across Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland, and claimed to have scaled profitably to an eight-figure annual revenue run rate. The August 2023 Series A of 10.5 million euros led by Left Lane Capital funded retail expansion and hiring.

Retail became the second engine after direct-to-consumer. HOLY moved into supermarkets and drugstores, reaching more than 10,000 retail doors, and expanded to six countries. Co-CEO Horsch reported cumulative sales exceeding 180 million euros and a HOLY Squad community above 2 million members, with the team growing past 150 people across product, brand, and retail operations.