AN ONLINE marketplace launched to take on Amazon has been declared the fastest-growing e-commerce company of its size in the UK.

Poole-based OnBuy.com doubled its workforce to more than 30 last month and has launched a £3million investment round.

It aims to extend its operations to another 42 countries in August.

OnBuy had three million monthly visitors in April, according to a list of e-commerce companies that have grown during the coronavirus crisis.

That made it the fastest-growing company in the UK among those with more than 250,000 monthly visitors, according to the analytics company SimilarWeb.

The site also ranked fourth for visitor volume growth last month, behind the online giants Etsy, Halfords and Apple.

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Founder and chief executive Cas Paton said: “I am thrilled to see OnBuy exactly where it should be: ranked alongside some of the world’s biggest brands and getting the recognition it deserves.”

Launched in 2016, OnBuy has thousands of retailers on its platform, but does not compete with them by selling its own stock, as Amazon does.

It has had more than 5,000 sellers since its inception and offers more than 24million products to more than 8m customers.

“We have an enormous growth journey ahead of us and this is just the start of what we see as a rapid scale up, overseas and within the UK. We’ve worked tirelessly to build a sophisticated marketplace that serves both customers and sellers equally, and now we’re reaping the benefits of that hard work.

“We’re proud to run a business that gives customers access to both big name brands and independent sellers at competitive prices, especially given the current reality. Our growth shows that both sellers and buyers are crying out for a different online marketplace experience, and we’re ready and excited to be able to give them that at OnBuy.com.”

Last month, OnBuy doubled the fees it pays to affiliate sites that refer traffic to its marketplace, in response to Amazon cutting its own affiliate payments. The move led to a 100 per cent increase in sign-ups.

OnBuy’s expansion last month included the hiring of a new head of marketing, Josh Brooks, and SEO (search engine optimisation) manager, Arvid Linde.

It opened a £3m investment round following an average gross merchandise volume (GMV) of £61.3m for this year.