Tech company rewards employees with $7,000 bonuses after being named New Zealand's fastest growing

• Kami was named New Zealand's fastest growing company by Deloitte last week.
• As a result, Kami gave each of its 53 employees a $7,000 bonus.

A tech business in New Zealand gave its employees hefty bonuses after it was named the country's fastest-growing company.

Each worker received 10,000 New Zealand dollars, roughly $7,000.

Kami, a platform which helps teachers and students interact and share resources, placed at the number one spot on the 2021 Deloitte Fast 50 index last week.

The company registered a 1,177% growth in revenue since 2018, according to Deloitte.

Kami, founded in 2013 by three Auckland university students, surprised employees with news of the bonus in a Zoom call this week.

"Our team had been working incredibly long hours, made a lot of sacrifices over the last 18 months, supporting teachers and students globally. We wanted a way to say thank you and recognise what they have achieved," Kami co-founder Hengjie Wang​ told stuff.co.nz.

The company says on its website that its products are used by teachers in more than 180 countries, and by more than 30 million teachers and students.

More than 12,000 K-12 schools in the US use Kami, the company said.

During the pandemic, Kami offered its software to teachers around the world free of change.

Wang told the Guardian that sales slowed rapidly, but that they have raced back in recent times.

"Fast forward 18 months, with that sort of massive shift in education, we saw maybe about five years' worth of growth in the market in one year," he said.

In recent months, employees at a number of other companies got cash bonuses after reporting strong financial results.

Earlier this month, Anders Holch Povlsen, Denmark's richest man and the owner of Bestseller A/S, said he would be giving each of his 17,000 employees a bonus equivalent to one month's pay.

The company said it had made a net income of $563 million between July 2020 to July 2021 - close to nine times the revenue made over the previous year.

To thank its employees for working during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK telecoms company BT said in March all staff would get a $1,364 cash bonus and $682 in shares.