Brendan Jennings, managing partner, Deloitte, with John Slyne, managing director and group CFO, Populis, and David O'Flanagan, partner, Deloitte
A Dublin-based digital media company founded in 2004 and rebranded a year ago as Populis has been ranked first in this year’s Deloitte Technology Fast 50 awards with an aggregate growth rate of 7,982pc over the past five years.
With a network of more than 500 web properties visited by more than 35m unique users every month, Populis provides content to communities, crowdsourced from a team of expert collaborators and published on its websites, including Excite Europe and Better Deals.
It employs a multinational staff of 150 in offices in Ireland and Italy, and is active in seven languages and 10 markets.
The average growth rate of the Fast 50 companies in this year’s list is 674pc. Software Asset Management Ireland achieved second place, with a growth rate of 6,899pc. Third place went to H2 Compliance with a growth rate of 2,552pc.
Rising Stars keep rising
Two companies have also been awarded Rising Star awards. This category recognises younger companies with the fastest growth in turnover over the past three years.
Sixteen South, which develops, creates and produces children’s television, is Northern Ireland’s Rising Star winner, while marketing software specialist Customer Minds won the title in the Republic of Ireland.
One of last year’s Rising Star companies, Learning Pool, was the highest-ranked company from Northern Ireland, reaching the Top 6 with a growth rate of 1,100pc.
“Looking at the list of Deloitte Fast 50 winners in 2011, it becomes clear that we are witnessing the second wave of Irish technology companies starting to mature,” said David O’Flanagan, partner with Deloitte, Dublin.
“In 2001, companies such as Conduit, Horizon Technologies and Iona were riding high as Fast 50 winners; 10 years on and there are new kids on the block who mirror their predecessors in having great ideas and understand that to grow they have to go global.”
