Deloitte Romania opens applications for the 24th edition of the Technology Fast 50 Central Europe competition

Deloitte Romania opens application for the 24^th edition of the Technology Fast 50 Central Europe competition, addressed to large and small local companies in the technology sector, public and private, which register accelerated growth.

Providing both established and emerging technology companies the platform to highlight their leading position in their field of activity, the competition is held simultaneously in 18 Central European countries, namely Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Central Europe is a program that ranks 50 fast growing technology companies, based on percentage revenue growth over the previous four years (2019-2022) and includes all related industry sectors – communications, environmental technology, fintech, hardware, healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, software.

In order to be considered eligible for the main CE Fast 50 ranking, companies must meet several financial criteria. Thus, companies need to have a minimum €50,000 annual revenue in the first three years (2019-2021) and at least €100,000 in 2022, be headquartered in a Central Europe country, own proprietary intellectual property or proprietary technology.

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“Year after year, the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 competition highlights the growth achieved by technology companies, their desire to innovate and their entrepreneurship spirit. We are proud that local businesses have received this competition’s recognition along the years, either in the main ranking or in the special categories, which proves the Romanian start-up ecosystem has reached a certain level of maturity and creativity, comparable to that of the market in Central Europe,” said Andrei Ionescu, Partner-in-Charge, Consulting and Risk Advisory, Deloitte Romania.

Since 2008, more than 40 local businesses have been either included among the fastest growing 50 companies in Central Europe or awarded with distinctions in special categories, such as “Most disruptive innovation” or “Impact Star”. They include UiPath, the global leader in robotic process automation, one of the Romanian companies recognized in 2017 with the “Most disruptive innovation” award, and the travel agency Vola.ro, awarded for the “Biggest Growth in Central Europe” in 2011 and holder of the first position for the next two consecutive years.

In 2022, Wave Studio, the local technology company specialized in mobile app development for Android and iOS, ranked 22^nd in the “Fast 50” category with a growth rate of 1,319% of the revenues registered between 2018 and 2021. Also, two Romanian companies were recognized by the Deloitte CE Fast 50 program among the fastest growing start-ups in the region, Pentest-Tools.com, which created a cloud-based platform to perform penetration testing and vulnerability assessment, ranked 17^th out of 25 start-ups in the “Companies to Watch” category, with a growth rate of 441%, while DRUID, the technology company specialized in developing intelligent virtual assistants dedicated to complex enterprise processes, ranked 19^th, with a growth rate of 345%. Additionally, three Romanian companies – Hermix, Kinderpedia and Tokinomo – were recognized by the Deloitte 2022 CE Technology Fast 50 program with the Impact Star Award.

In addition to the “Fast 50” category, the competition includes the “Companies to watch” category, which showcases companies that do not fulfill the criteria for the main Fast 50 ranking yet, but are in business for a minimum of three years (founded on or prior to December 31, 2019), and have base-year operating revenues of minimum €10,000 (2020) and current year operating revenue of minimum €30,000 (2022). The competition has one special recognition, the “Impact Stars” category, which recognizes companies for successfully linking their products and services with a positive impact on society, business, innovativeness, environment or diversity.

Google Cloud is the official Regional Technology Partner for this year’s edition for the third successive year. The special recognition by Google Cloud and Deloitte, “CE Tech Rocketship!”, will be included in the program. Joint teams of Google Cloud and Deloitte will assess the companies’ technologies and award those with the greatest business potential. In order to be eligible for the “CE Tech Rocketship!” category, companies must develop scalable solutions with the potential to serve customers and be headquartered within Central Europe. The award is addressed to all companies that apply to the CE Technology Fast 50 ranking in 2023.

The online application and eligibility criteria can be found on the regional Technology Fast 50 website and on the local website.

The application process will close on August 31, 2023. The ranking results will be announced in November 2023.