The Pearcey Foundation today announced Ashik Ahmed, Co-Founder, CTO and CEO of Deputy as this year’s Pearcey NSW ICT Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

The annual award, now in its 21st year, was presented by the NSW Minister for Finance and Small Business, the Hon Damien Tudehope MLC at the awards event in Sydney tonight.

The Pearcey Award recognises entrepreneurs for taking a risk, making a difference and inspiring others in the development of the Australian information and communications technology industry.

“Ashik has been recognised by the Pearcey Foundation as someone who has quietly achieved greatness, growing his company to be another Australian-led global leader, while continuing to inspire and nurture a great team culture that attracts and keeps the best in the industry,” said Anthony Woodward, chief judge of the Pearcey Foundation’s NSW Judging Panel.

“Winning this year’s NSW Pearcey Award is a validation of Deputy’s sound business model, of doing one thing really well and making a lasting difference to the Australian ICT landscape.”

Deputy is a global cloud-based workforce management platform for employee scheduling, timesheets and communication. It was spawned from the software Ashik built to manage rostering and casual staff at people-intensive services business, Aerocare, after he realised that many other businesses had the same issues. ​ The business bootstrapped its way to $10m turnover and 28,000 clients before raising $33m in 2017, and then Australia’s largest Series B funding round of $111 million in 2018. Deputy continues to sustain incredible growth and now serves 165,000 customers all over the world.

The powerful culture Ashik has created at Deputy is driven by what Deputy means to his customers. To Ashik, when customers choose Deputy to manage their workforce, he sees this as the customer entrusting Deputy to be their second in command. ​ His strong belief in always ‘putting yourself second’ is deeply infused throughout the business, and reflects a deeply caring and nurturing culture where individuals are encouraged to think about the success of their colleagues, their teams and their customers first.

The Pearcey Foundation would like to acknowledge the ongoing support of the NSW Government, and this year’s sponsors of the event University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), WiseTech Global, ASX and ABSIA.

For more information about previous NSW Pearcey Entrepreneur Award winners, go to https://pearcey.org.au/nsw/.