Voyager Internet tops Fast 50 with huge growth

Seeby Woodhouse, chief executive officer of internet company Voyager. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Telecommunications business Voyager Internet has taken out the top spot in this year's Deloitte Fast 50 Awards, after experiencing growth of 1391 per cent this year.

Voyager Internet provides domain names and web hosting services as well as voice communication services and cloud telecommunications for its customers. The company has around 100,000 company domain names registered in New Zealand, making up about 20 per cent of all domestic domain names. Voyager was the fastest growing company out of this years five finalists.

To qualify for the awards, companies had to have growth of more than 201 per cent for the year, however all five finalists had exceeded 1000 per cent growth for the year.

Other finalists included online motor vehicle sales company 2 Cheap Cars (1294 per cent growth), fund manager Pie Funds Management (1269 per cent), cloud-based retail software platform Vend (1098 per cent) and men's clothing retailer I Love Ugly (1087 per cent).

Deloitte partner Bill Hale said the awards highlighted the growth in business confidence in New Zealand as well as the continuing recovery of the economic environment.

"There are more companies out there growing faster than ever before, particularly in Auckland," Hale said. "Auckland and Upper North Island-based businesses have swept this year's top 5 and account for 9 of the top 10 fastest growing companies on the index."

This year's Fast 50 includes companies from across New Zealand, including 30 from the Auckland region, seven from Canterbury, six from the Central North Island, five from Wellington and two from Dunedin. Hale said a number of the companies had been focusing on a specific business niche and were excelling in that area.

"While a broad cross-section of business is represented in this year's index, a growing number of Fast 50 companies earn their keep helping other small-to-medium sized businesses make better use of technology. Construction activity and franchise-style businesses are also enjoying high levels of growth," Hale said.

"The underlying success of a lot of fast-growth businesses is that they do a specific thing very well and they really try and nail that niche."

As well as taking out the number one spot in the 2014 Deloitte Fast 50, Voyager Internet also won the national award for fastest growing technology business.

The full Fast 50 index will be announced tonight at the Deloitte Festival of Fast Growth, and ranks the fast growth businesses in New Zealand across a range of sectors including manufacturing, technology, services, retail and exports.