Finnish-based food delivery service Wolt was ranked as Europe's second-fastest growing company in 2020, according to British business newspaper the Financial Times.
This was the first time that Wolt made FT's list. The financial publication reported that the company had absolute revenue growth of more than 15,000 percent. It also reported the firm's revenue exceeded 30 million euros in 2018. The company was founded in 2014.
One of Wolt's co-founders and also it's CEO, Miki Kuusi, told Yle News via email the firm was taken aback by the high ranking.
"We were glad and, to be honest, a bit confused to find out about the ranking. This is a listing that we also closely follow, but still did not expect this. Interesting to see if this will boost our international recruiting, as we have plenty of positions open at our website," Kuusi said.
Another Wolt co-founder, Juhani Mykkänen, said the company is continuing to expand its staff as well as where it operates. The food delivery service operates in 20 countries and 72 cities and the firm announced in June of last year it had received 143 million euros in funding that it planned to use for expansion.
Further growth in store
"We are still opening new markets – the last one being Cyprus at the beginning of this year – as well as plenty of new cities in our existing markets," Mykkänen said on Tuesday.
"We've added 500 people within the last year alone, and we continue hiring for things like product development, new markets and business development. At the same time, we're starting to look deeper into new areas of how we can be helpful in our cities, such as delivery-only kitchens that enable more affordable meals, or the possibility of letting people order things other than food," Mykkänen said.
The company's main competitor, Foodora, recently announced that it was buying the delivery service Pizza Online.
Foodora and Wolt have both faced scrutiny from freelancing delivery workers over the firms' business practices. A group of delivery workers from both firms created the group justice4couriers.fi, which aims to improve working conditions in the industry.
Meanwhile, Pizza Online has faced accusations that it maintained its market position by preventing restaurants from using other services, while taking up to 22 percent of the purchase price of each order.
The Financial Times has published its annual rankings of the 1,000 fastest-growing firms for the past four years and this year's list included 18 firms from Finland.
Edited at 6:06pm on 3 March 2020 to reflect the correct number of countries and cities in which Wolt has operations.