These 3 N.B. Companies Among 25 Up And Comers In National List
Five New Brunswick-based companies have been named to the Branham300 listing, which includes Canada’s top public and private information and communications technology companies.
The top 250 companies and top 25 multinationals with Canadian operations are ranked by revenues, while the list of 25 up-and-coming companies are based on Branham Group’s assessment of innovation and long-term promise. Branham Group is a global ICT industry analyst and strategic marketing company based in Ottawa.
“The original, and still today, the objective of the Branham300 is to raise the business value of the Canadian ICT sector,” says Branham Group CEO Wayne Gudbranson.
Kognitiv Spark of Fredericton, Mesh Diversity of Quispamsis and The Lotto Factory from Fredericton were all on the 25 up-and-comers list.
Kognitiv Spark CEO Yan Simard says being on the list is a “nice confirmation” of where the company is headed and helps with market credibility.
“We think it’s an honour of course and a nice recognition of all the hard work done so far. But also it recognizes our growth potential for the years to come,” he said in an interview with Huddle. “It always helps with visibility for sure, and it helps with credibility as well…obviously there’s something in our story that appeals to [Branham].”
Kognitiv Spark uses holographic visualization, collaboration and connectivity tools, powered by the Microsoft HoloLens, to connect subject matter experts with technicians on the ground trying to solve a problem on a work site or repair a piece of equipment. The company opened a U.K. office in March.
Mesh Diversity offers a behavioural analytics platform that measures and integrates diversity and inclusion into the talent lifecycle, and the Lotto Factory provides a fully automated fundraising platform for 50/50 lottery draws for charities and non-profits.
“We look at their overall products and the problem that they’re solving, and their overall marketing strategy. And so we do a lot of research on those companies and we compare them to others,” Gudbranson said. “Mesh diversity was really cool because there’s really a focus on inclusiveness and that’s a very timely application right now…it has merit in terms of what we’re trying to do as a country and other countries as well.”
Gudbranson says there are many great companies around Canada, but Branham takes a regional approach each year. In this 26th edition of the list, with more than 100 applications for the up-and-comers list solicited from economic development agencies, incubators and accelerators, eight of the 25 companies chosen were from Atlantic Canada.
“We believe, Atlantic Canada, the fruits of their labour are starting to work out. They spend a lot of time promoting the industry outside of the province and nationally, as well as internationally. And we’re getting people telling us that these are cool companies in addition to our own research,” he said.
The nature of the technology coming out of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, whose ICT sectors are significant in the region, is also becoming more diverse, Gudbranson said.
“Before it was, kind of, more focused on one or two vertical industries. Now you’re finding there are [consumer-based], B2B and B2B2C capabilities coming out of those two provinces that are across industries,” he said.
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Two other New Brunswick companies were also included in the top 250 list.
PQA Testing from Fredericton, a software testing company, and Novanta, a Saint John tech company serving the medical sector, both went up on the ranking. PQA Testing is now ranked number 177, up from 180 the year before, with a 1.32 per cent revenue increase. Novanta rose from number 22 to 21 with a more than 17 per cent revenue increase.
This year’s Branham300 list is based on the 2018 fiscal year-end financial snapshots of the companies included.