NextWindow takes it out for NZ in the Deloitte Tech Fast 500

Fifty-one New Zealand businesses have made the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 2009 edition for the Asia Pacific region, it was announced in Hong Kong last night.

The Fast 500 ranks the fastest growing companies in the Asia Pacific region based on percentage growth from 2006 to 2008.

Last year, 31 New Zealand companies were ranked, while 38 made the cut in 2007 and 31 in 2006.

The New Zealand ranked companies come from across the country with 16 based in Auckland, 16 in Wellington, 10 from around Canterbury, six from the Waikato and three from Otago.

This year, NextWindow come out tops for New Zealand with a revenue growth of $828.839%. NextWindow designs and manufactures optical touch screens for computers, computer displays, and large format screens. It has offices in Auckland, as well as California, Taiwan and Singapore.

In November, the company was also ranked third in the 2009 Deloitte Fast 50, its fourth consecutive appearance on the index of New Zealand’s fastest growing companies (where, speaking to NBR after the awards ceremony, chief executive Al Munro had a couple of sharp words about the absence of local backers).

In the Fast 500, NextWindow was joined in the top 100 companies by seven other New Zealand companies, which include Telesmart, Sonar6, TracMap NZ, Geneious, ASR, AMG Agency and Assurity Consulting.

Deloitte New Zealand technology and media practice leader John Bell said New Zealand was “punching well above its weight” by having its companies filling more than 10% of the Index.

“These 51 New Zealand companies have done extraordinarily well, and their success flies in the face of much of the negative sentiment that we have heard from many quarters.

I think it is important that we acknowledge there are some outstanding Kiwi businesses that have proven to be recession-proof and recession busters. In our experience, these are often led by people that have stuck to the basics and got the fundamentals of their business in order.”

The rankings were dominated by Taiwan with 99 companies listed out of 500, followed by China with 97, India with 71, South Korea with 66 and Australia with 60 companies.

Average revenue growth rate across all 500 fastest-growing technology companies in Asia Pacific was 361% over the three-year period. The most prevalent industry sectors were software, with 162 companies listed, and semiconductors, components and electronics, with 84 companies listed.

The overall top-ranked company was Chinese internet firm Vancl, a direct marketing online clothes retailer with the extraordinary growth rate of 29,577%.