Dundee-based mobile games developer, Outplay Entertainment, has been named Scotland’s fastest-growing technology company in Deloitte’s 2017 UK Technology Fast 50 awards.
The business, which has produced games such as Angry Birds POP!, Mystery Match, Booty Quest, and Castle Creeps TD, has posted revenue growth of 1,904% over the past four years placing it 11th in the overall UK table. Glasgow-based IT and communications firm, Exsel Group, was the other Scottish company included in the 20th year of the awards, coming in at 27th position with four-year growth of 959%.
Outplay Entertainment was co-founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneurs and brothers Richard and Douglas Hare, opening its Dundee studio in April 2011. The company’s games have been downloaded more than 100 million times, with millions of users playing every month.
In 2015 and 2016, Outplay Entertainment saw revenues more than double year-on-year and the business said that 2017 is going to be another year of strong growth.
Douglas Hare commented: “The previous company I co-founded was based out in California and, back in 2008, we developed and published a relatively simple mobile game as a launch title for the Apple App Store. I saw an amazing opportunity to build on this, but our publisher client base was more interested in big-ticket games. The market for mobile games was small and undeveloped, but I knew it would soon grow.
“Realising we needed to set up a new business, we looked at several locations to set up Outplay Entertainment. After talking to Scottish Development International and Scottish Enterprise, we decided to move back to Scotland and, given its long history in gaming, settled on Dundee.
“We started small and built on our initial success. We’re very bullish about the future and, after two years of double-digit growth, 2017 has been another exciting period for the company. Picking up the Fast 50 Scottish award is further proof that we’re heading in the right direction.”
Garry Tetley, Private Markets Partner at Deloitte Scotland, said: “Outplay Entertainment is a great example of the new kind of entrepreneurial business emerging in Scotland – international, focussed on technology, and ambitious. The company featuring so prominently in the 20th edition of the Fast 50 is also a further vote of confidence in Dundee’s burgeoning games industry. The team deserves a huge congratulations for what its achieved in such little time.”
Deliveroo was named the overall winner of the 2017 UK Technology Fast 50 awards. The London-based online food courier service achieved a staggering average growth rate of 107,117% over the last four years. In the twenty-year history of the Fast 50, no other company has ever grown at a faster rate. Bloom & Wild (average growth rate of 13,818%) and MoveGB (6,063%) completed the top three.
David Cobb, lead partner for the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 programme, said: “The achievements of this year’s winner are truly remarkable: Deliveroo is now the fastest-growing technology company in the history of the competition. Their relentless growth has justifiably added them to the exclusive list of UK ‘unicorns’. Everyone wants a slice of the online takeaway business, but very few have found success in the same way that Deliveroo has.”
Deloitte’s initiative for the UK’s fastest growing companies was supported by the award sponsors DLA Piper, Oracle NetSuite, and Silicon Valley Bank.
