Tremend is the fastest-growing technology company in Romania

• The average growth rate of CE’s Fast 50 technology companies jumps to 1,057% from 560% in 2015
• Last time the average growth surpassed 1000% was in 2012 (1,026%)
• Vola.ro of Romania maintains growth record of 17,323% registered by in 2012 
• Four companies from Romania have made it to the ranking 
• Companies from 11 countries are represented
• 43 companies are in the ranking for the first time, including those in first, second and third places; one moves up and six move down
• Companies representing IT & Digital Solutions (41) dominate the ranking

Nine of the top ten places in the 2016 Deloitte CE Technology Fast 50 report, which ranks the companies showing the strongest revenue growth rate between 2012 and 2015 are new entries to the ranking. In total, 43 companies were new entrants, emphasising the dynamic rate of change affecting the region’s burgeoning technology companies.  

The entire top five entrants in the ranking are new to the Fast 50 this year. First place in the 2016 ranking goes to the Polish tech marketing hub and software business Codewise, whose amazing three-year growth rate of 13,052% eclipses the still highly impressive 4,555% it recorded in 2015 when winning the Rising Stars award. Codewise also won the Big Five award this year, an exceptional achievement for a company that just 12 months ago was too young even to feature in the main Fast 50 report. 

However, record-growth registered by Romanian-based Vola.ro in 2012 (17,323%) has not been broken yet.

In any other year, the second-placed CodiLime software business, also from Poland, would have dominated proceedings with its exceptional three-year growth rate of 5,038%.

Third place in the Fast 50 goes to Czech IT services company Dataspring, with its three-year growth rate of 3,129%. Slovakia’s JUMP software house was fourth (1,965%) and fifth place was claimed by another software business, NSoft (1,760%), this year’s only entrant from Bosnia & Herzegovina.

The only company to retain a place in the top ten from 2015 was the ninth-placed High Tech Engineering Center from Serbia (1,109%), which slipped from the seventh place it achieved last year.

Romania

In Romania, software solutions and consultancy company Tremend ranks 37th in the Fast 50 category, the highest among the Romanian companies. Tremend has more than 11 years on the market and over 60 million start-ups, SMEs or Fortune 500 companies from 15 countries are using its platforms. Trencadis, a technology company which simplifies processes for companies and insitututions ranks 40th, followed by web developer and marketing online company Webventure (46th) and Accesa (49th), a technology company in the airspace and hospitality industry.

“For the past years, the tech start-up activity in Romania has been bubbling and this has been brought many times to our attention by international media. Whether the country will be the next tech hub of Europe or not it depends very much on how we manage to keep our talents at home and need to invest in their education,” said Alina Mirea, Partner and program coordinator for Deloitte Romania. “I am glad that the Fast 50 program has continued to spur interest among the Romanian companies and four of them have made it among the most dynamic in the region while one has made it among the Big 5, this is a true achievement. I am sure this ranking will only motivate them to continue their path to growth and we will continue to follow their journey with interest.”

Special categories

The Rising Stars award marks out those companies that are too young to feature in the main Fast 50 report but have delivered such eye-catching growth since their foundation that they are likely to feature in the main report in years to come. The winner of this year’s Rising Star award is Lithuanian smart device company Deeper, UAB with a three-year growth rate of 3,631%. Second is Phenicoptere, (2,370%) a Polish company that has developed a reusable make-up remover that uses water only. 

The Big Five category is for fast-growing larger companies whose scale makes it difficult for them to compete in revenue growth with the smaller businesses in the Fast 50 ranking. That makes it all the more remarkable that Codewise headed both the Big Five listing and the Fast 50 ranking. Its astonishing 13,052% growth rate over three years dramatically exceeds the more-than-respectable 484% achieved by second-placed Slovakian software company Aliter Technologies. Third place was taken by Pigu, UAB (171%), the Lithuanian online retailer that was runner-up in the Big Five in 2015. Romanian-based software integrator Insoft ranks 5th. 

This year, a new category for the Most Disruptive Innovation was introduced and the winner is Polish-based HiProMine, which is using insect-based technologies in areas including waste management and the production of food, feed and fertiliser. This award singled out a business that might not have made the ranking but is pioneering highly disruptive new ideas or technologies. 

Countries

Eleven countries contribute companies to this year’s Fast 50 ranking: Poland (17), the Czech Republic (7), Croatia (6), Slovakia (5), Hungary and Romania (4 each), Lithuania (3) and Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Serbia and Slovenia (1 each). 

Sectors

In 2016, a new set of industry sectors was introduced to categorise entrants in the Fast 50 programme. These are IT & Digital Solutions (which dominate the ranking with 41 entrants), Media & Telecommunications (6), Biotech, Nanotech & Medtech (0, although one featured in the Rising Stars category) and Clean Tech & Energy (3).

For more information about the Deloitte Central Europe Technology Fast 50 program, please visit www.deloitte.com/en/fast50romania. The Central Europe Technology Fast 50 ranks the region’s fastest-growing tech companies, based on revenue growth over a four-year period. For the 2016 ranking, revenues from 2012 to 2015 were analysed.