Four companies headquartered in Scotland are features in the 17th annual Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100 league table (compared to seven last year).
New entrants include Clyde Space, which builds up to 12 flight-ready mini-satellites in Glasgow each month. Its customers include NASA and the European Space Agency, and sales grew by an average of 72% a year to £5.3m in 2016. It is led by founder, Craig Clark, and chaired by Will Whitehorn, who helped conceive Virgin Galactic.
Dundee-based Outplay Entertainment is another new entrant. Specialising in free-to-play games for smartphones, tablets, and social networks, its successes include Alien Creeps TD, which has been downloaded by more than 20m players. Fuelled by £7.84m raised from investors including Pentech Ventures and the Scottish Investment Bank, last year it acquired Derby-based competitor Eight Pixels Square, and grew sales 172% to £15.6m.
The other two features companies are M Squared Lasers and Edge Testing Solutions which have had annual sales growth over 3 years of 52% and 42% respectively.
The companies in Scotland appear with businesses from around Britain, including designer fashion website Farfetch, peer-to-peer lending platform Funding Circle and money transfer provider WorldRemit. Past stars range from travel search engine Skyscanner, which was bought by Ctrip, China’s largest travel company, for £1.4bn last November, to takeaway website Just Eat, now worth £4.2bn.
Sales at the Scottish firms have grown by an average of 85% a year over three years to a total of £45m, and together they now employ nearly 500 people.
Steve Langan, CEO of Hiscox Insurance Company, commented:
“Congratulations to all of the companies on the Sunday Times Tech Track 100. Their courage is laudable; rapid growth and continual innovation takes grit. We are extremely proud to be associated with such an impressive list.”
