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30 I Cover story bne November 2017
Poland rises, Croatia
surprises in CEE Fast 50
was the home of eight fast growing tech companies, putting it into second place, and it was the only country to produce companies across all three market seg- ments monitored by Deloitte – Clean Tech & Energy, IT & Digital Solutions, and Internet Media and Telecoms.
The top ranked Croatian company on the list was Rimac Automobili, which in just six years went from a small business operating out of founder Mate Rimac’s garage to the producer of world’s fastest electric car – argu- ably the fastest-accelerating car of any sort in production – Concept_One.
In a 2016 interview with bne Intel- liNews, Rimac said he was committed to keeping Rimac Automobili a Croa- tian company and would never move production or development abroad.
A further six companies hailed from Lithuania, compared to just one each from the other two Baltic States. Second ranked overall was Lithuanian Deeper,
a producer of intelligent devices, which welcomed the news on its Facebook page, saying “As our CEO Aurelijus Liubinas told Deloitte, “we have a motto at Deeper: “Dream Big” ... and our success comes from having a strong team that buys into this approach.” Thanks to all the team and our customers for helping us achieve this!”
Elsewhere in the region, there were five companies from Czechia and three from Romania, while Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia were each the birthplace of two
Clare Nuttall in Bucharest
The rapid rise of new technology companies in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region was reflected in the latest Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Central Europe. Two thirds (68%) of the companies ranked were new entrants to the list, which programme leader Agnieszka Zielinska noted highlighted “the speed our top-performing young companies are developing”.
Czechia was the home to the top
ranked CEE tech company in the ranking, Kiwi.com, founded by youthful college dropout turned entrepreneur Oliver Dlouhý in 2012 to provide users with the cheapest flight itineraries and combina- tions. As bne IntelliNews reported earlier this year, Kiwi.com is fast achieving “uni- corn” status to rival the country’s previ- ous breakthrough success Avast Software.
Kiwi.com, which is based in Brno, the Czech second city that is rated CEE's best destination for tech startups, has grown by a staggering 7,165% over the last four years.
“If any startup has a chance to succeed, then it is almost certain to be one that manages to perfect something we deal with on a regular basis – such as cutting
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costs when buying airline tickets. But in order to achieve large-scale success, it also has to find a gap in the market. And that’s exactly what Kiwi.com has been able to do,” the report commented.
Deloitte orders companies according
to their revenue growth over the four years from 2013 to 2016, discovering that this year their average growth outstripped last year’s. “I found many things about the participants impressive. For example, the average growth rate
of the companies in this year’s ranking
“Czechia was the home to the top ranked CEE tech company in the ranking”
exceeded last year’s outstanding 1,057% to hit 1,127%,” commented Zielinska.
Poland – the largest economy in the region and a long-established tech hub – dominated the latest ranking, with Pol- ish companies accounting for 19 of the fastest growing tech companies in the region up from 17 on the 2016 ranking.
Still there were some surprises. Croatia
fast growing tech companies. Bosnia & Herzegovina’s sole entry, Mostar-based NSoft, remained within the top 10 on the ranking for the second year, though it fell slightly from fifth to seventh place.
While all the companies originated within the CEE region, Zielinska points out that many have expanded outside the region. “I find it remarkable that around half of companies in this year’s