CHILDREN’S BOOK STARTUP IS BRITAIN’S TOP TECH FIRM

A STARTUP that personalises children’s books has been named Britain’s fastest-growing private tech firm.

Wonderbly, which generates unique books based on a child’s name, birthday or location, grew 294.3pc this past year, with sales of £25.9m and book sales touching 3m.

The growth was enough to propel the firm to the top of the Tech Track 100 league table, beating peer-topeer betting company Smarkets, which came second. Cyber security developer Darktrace came third.

Asi Sharabi, 43, ( secondleft) came up with the idea for Wonderbly while reading a tailored storybook to his daughter. His co-founders David Cadji-Newby, 42, Pedro Serapicos, 42, and Tal Oron, 40, later joined to make the business a reality.

Wonderbly credits its growth to its business model. It creates the stories and illustrations in-house, alongside the technology to customise the books and ecommerce software to order them online.

The firm secured a £100,000 loan after appearing on BBC TV’s Dragons’ Den in 2014 and later raised £16.5m in three rounds, led by investors including Google Ventures.