BrazilChinese companies dominate Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 list for APAC
Deloitte has released its Technology Fast 500 rankings for the Asia Pacific region, with Chinese open platform real estate unicorn Ke.com claiming the top spot after notching growth in excess of 30,000 percent over the past three years.
Ranking the fastest growing regionally-based companies in the software, hardware, clean tech, media, communications and life sciences segments, the annual Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 list compiled by Big Four professional services firm Deloitte (which, incidentally, recorded its own 13.3 percent growth in the region for its past financial year), has this year seen real estate platform provider Ke.com come out on top.
Ke.com, developed by leading Chinese real estate brokerage Homelink, is an online real estate platform for new, second-hand and rental property listings utilising a range of innovative 4.0 technology enhancements such as virtual reality to provide browsers with interactive 3D viewings of available properties. Having gained unicorn status (start-ups valued at a worth of above $1 billion), Ke.com has recorded staggering 32,179 percent growth over the past three years.
“We are honored to be recognised by Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific," said Ke.com CEO Stanley Peng on the announcement. “Our success lies in BeiKe, a platform that connects consumers and businesses, with a property transaction gene. BeiKe is an industry infrastructure that has facilitated an ecosystem for diverse real estate brands, stores and agents, bringing together and empowering agencies of the property market, with similar value and goals.”
For the remainder of the list it was a familiar story, with Chinese firms dominating the pointy end with seven entries inside the top ten and a clean-sweep of the top five – mirroring the recent release of fellow Big Four firm KPMG’s annual global Fintech 100 rankings for 2018, of which Chinese firms claimed three of the top five spots and six of the first dozen. Depending on the source, China is now home to 160-plus unicorns, the majority in the tech domain and founded in just the past six years.
Following Ke.com in the top five on the Technology 500 rankings, which assesses percentage fiscal year revenue growth over three years, were (by product name) IBUYCHEM.com in the media category (with growth of 24,702%), Weshare Financial (software – 24,564%), Sinotex.com (Media – 23,646%) and Quwan Network Technology in the communications category with growth of 16,895 percent.
Altogether, the average revenue growth for the top-ten ranking companies, which further included two entries from India (MogIi Labs and Razorpay in 6th and 7th) and one from New Zealand (HDT – 10th), was pegged at 17,314 percent – the highest ever recorded average in the 17 years of the rankings. The average growth for the overall list was also the highest ever achieved, clocking in at 987 percent across the 500 listed companies.
Breakdown
As a country breakdown, companies from China accounted for nearly 30 percent of the fast-growing 500, while Taiwan contributed 91 companies to the list and Australia 71, both down from previous years. A further 44 were from South Korea. Meanwhile, as to categories, Software continues to dominate the list with 190 entries operating in the sector (including five of the top ten), followed by those in the Media (170) and Hardware brackets.
“This year brings an interesting and diverse selection of B2B e-commerce, including real-estate, chemicals, textiles, industrial supplies and fintech companies,” said Deloitte partner and APAC and Japan Technology, Media, and Telecom practice leader Toshifumi Kusunoki. “We are witnessing a rapid transition from legacy business models to online platforms among B2B ecosystems and China is at the forefront of this growth.”
