OnBuy Wins Prestigious Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 Award

OnBuy was awarded the prestigious UK Technology Fast 50 award by leading global business consultancy Deloitte last night during their annual awards ceremony.

Check Out These Resources

• Do you need a business bank account for your online business? Take a look at our review of the five best bank accounts for sellers, some of which are free with no minimum balance or deposits. ^[sponsored]
• Boost your social media engagement with Publer. Learn how you can save time writing engaging content faster with AI. ^[sponsored]
• Could your online business use capital for growth? Here is a primer on revenue-based loans, and how they work.

The Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 is one of the UK’s premier technology awards programs highlighting companies that have experienced rapid growth over the past four years.

Most companies on the Fast 50 list are based in London and come from rapid growth sectors such as Fintech, Software, and Health Care.

OnBuy won the regional award for South West & Wales and is one of the few companies in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 not in the three dominating business categories. The online marketplace qualified for this award reporting stunning 479% growth over the last four years.

By comparison, the leading Fintech company reported 21,569% growth, the leading Software company came in at 10,792% growth, and the leading Health Care company reported 11,421% growth.

“Marketplaces are the hardest businesses to launch. On day one, you open your doors, and you have nothing to sell and no customers. And because you have no customers, no retailer will join you. Why would they?”

OnBuy founder Cas Paton

Despite this barrier, Paton managed to turn his online marketplace start-up into a genuine challenger, taking on global household names such as Amazon and eBay.

OnBuy Top UK-Headquartered Online Marketplace

According to Statista, OnBuy is the fifth most visited marketplace in the UK and the number one UK headquartered marketplace. The other four are all global marketplaces headquartered in the US.

Paton said OnBuy has now over 11,000 brands and retailers on its marketplaces, including well-known brands such as Lego and Samsung, and the company is adding between 500 and 600 retailers per month.

Celebrating only its fifth year in business, OnBuy is not done yet. The company plans an ambitious global expansion by 2023 that will bring the marketplace to other important eCommerce countries such as the US, Australia, and many more.

Paton has been an entrepreneur since he was 14 years old. He says OnBuy is his most ambitious project yet and credits his small highly dedicated team in helping grow the business at record levels since its inception in 2016.

This year, OnBuy added experience at the C-Level, filling important roles such as CCO (Mark Lister), CFO (James Watts), CMO (Aron Cody-Boutcher), and CTO (Joanna Smith). In addition, the company raised £35 million in series A+ funding to fuel its growth.

“This is just the beginning,” Paton added. “We’ll grow 20 times over in the next few years. Nothing can slow us down now. Nothing! OnBuy is like a snowball rolling down the mountain – and this particular mountain is damn big.”

Cas Paton and OnBuy COO Mark Lister attended the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 award celebration which was hosted in person this year, following 2020’s virtual event.

To qualify for the award, companies had to provide verifiable accounting to show their growth over the past four years, be involved in a technology-related field, headquartered in the UK and not be part of another business group, and have base-year (year 1) operating revenues of £43,000 (€50,000 / $57,700) and a current year (year 4) operating revenue of at least £860,000 (€1,000,000 / $1,154,000).

The Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 program is sponsored by Barclays and Oracle Netsuite and is now in its twenty-fourth year.