June 18, 2020 — TechPoint, the nonprofit, industry-led growth accelerator for Indiana’s tech ecosystem, honored the successes and innovation of Indiana people, companies, places, and products during a live broadcast of the organization’s 21st annual gala, with presenting sponsors Eli Lilly and Company, Genesys, Infosys, Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Salesforce. Early indications show that nearly 4,000 people tuned into the first-ever virtual event, making it the largest Mira Awards gala celebration in history.
The Mira Awards, which is the state’s largest and longest running technology awards program, recognizes the “Best of Tech” in Indiana. This year, 15 award winners and honorees were chosen from 129 nominees. Forty-eight independent, volunteer judges spent more than 850 total hours evaluating applications, interviewing nominees, and selecting this year’s winners. Judges included company founders, CEOs and presidents, CTOs, CIOs, and other subject matter experts.
Nearly all of this year’s award winners are bringing disruptive new products or technologies to their markets, industries or to the broader business landscape. For example, 2020 Mira Award winners are delivering on the promise of personalized medicine, breaking the cycle of crime and poverty, preventing injuries and deaths in the workplace, hiring for technical roles faster while reducing racial or gender bias, or getting customer feedback to the people who can affect change.
“Before COVID hit we set the ‘Be Bold’ Mira Awards theme,” said Mike Langellier, TechPoint president and CEO. “It was only fitting, in the midst of so much uncertainty and social distancing, that we be among the first to take an awards program online and get our tech community together to celebrate. If there’s a community that can embrace and pull it off it’s ours. We are grateful for all of the organizations that made the pivot with us. Congratulations to the winners and nominees on all of your impressive 2019 accomplishments. We’re proud to support you.”
Full List of the 2020 TechPoint Mira Award winners and honorees:
(Descriptions of the winners and why they were chosen are below.)
PEOPLE
Rising Entrepreneur Award – Amy Brown, Founder & CEO, Authenticx
Investor of the Year – Elevate Ventures
Trailblazer Award – Kristian Andersen, Partner, High Alpha
TechPoint Foundation for Youth Bridge Builder Award – The STEM Connection
PLACE
Community Impact Award – Indiana Department of Correction
Tech Education Award – Nextech
Rising Tech City Award – #FortBenTech Campus and City of Lawrence
PRODUCT
Tech Product of the Year – hc1’s PGx Advisor
Service Partner of the Year – KSM Consulting
Innovation of the Year – Anvl’s Automated Offline Hazard Identification
COMPANY
Exceptional Employer Award – Kronos Incorporated
Large Enterprise of the Year – Republic Airways
Startup of the Year – Woven
Scale-up of the Year (Tech Service) – KSM Consulting
Scale-up of the Year (Tech Product) – Zylo
Rising Entrepreneur Award (Amy Brown, Founder & CEO, Authenticx) – After a successful 20-year career in government service and corporate leadership roles, Amy Brown set out on an entrepreneurial path to solve a problem that she’d grappled with in prior roles and that she knew most companies faced, especially in healthcare. She founded Authenticx and, with the help of a talented team—through software and data analytics—built a product to ingest and dissect vast numbers of customer interactions and then deliver a comprehensive, authentic voice of customers to the C-suite and boardroom for decision making. READ MORE
Investor of the Year (Elevate Ventures) – Elevate Ventures has become a critical seed and early-stage investor in Indiana, investing in 76 Indiana companies in 2019 alone. So active is the team at Elevate Ventures that they earned the distinction last year of most active VC investor in the whole Great Lakes region. Elevate is providing the financial fuel and mentorship to hundreds of the state’s highest-promise startups. READ MORE
Trailblazer Award (Kristian Andersen, Partner, High Alpha) – Kristian Andersen is central to Indianapolis’ startup community and many prominent entities wouldn’t exist if not for him. He has vision to see the potential in people and organizations, a craftsmanship to distill and articulate that potential, a provocativeness that stirs people to act and think differently, and a boldness to take chances on new things or people. READ MORE
TechPoint Foundation for Youth Bridge Builder Award (The STEM Connection) – Vera Vander Kooy founded the STEM Connection in 2014, with the mission of encouraging diversity, inclusion and equity in STEM. In its first year, the program served about 100 participants. In the past five years 17,500 participants have taken part in offerings ranging from virtual STEM Quick Wins, day camps, field trips, professional development opportunities, family events, STEM Future Leaders and community engagements. READ MORE
Community Impact Award (Indiana Department of Corrections) – In partnership with The Last Mile program, Indiana is the first state outside of California to teach software coding skills to incarcerated persons. The small pilot blossomed in 2019 into a multi-facility program in Indiana that’s already having an impact. Providing offenders who are serving their time with real skills that are transferable to meaningful employment when released, can have a huge impact on reducing recidivism. It creates a powerful career pathway to high demand job opportunities. READ MORE
Tech Education Award (Nextech) – Nextech not only teaches computer science to students, they teach the teachers themselves. One of the largest reasons a school in Indiana doesn’t offer computer science is because they don’t have a qualified teacher. Well, Nextech fixed that. In 2019, Nextech facilitated 81 workshops, resulting in over 10,000 hours of training for over 1,100 K-12 teachers from 399 schools across Indiana. In total, 40,384 students were enrolled in classes taught by the teachers Nextech trained. READ MORE
Rising Tech City Award (#FortBenTech Campus and City of Lawrence) – Fort Ben Tech Campus has emerged as a unique and picturesque home to a collaborative network of nearly 30 tech companies. What was once a shuttered and dormant military base, is now considered the model for mixed use redevelopment of military bases throughout the United States. Located in the City of Lawrence, the Fort Ben Tech Campus made great strides in 2019, attracting new companies, talent and even regional partners to invest in the Fort, with several projects breaking ground this summer. READ MORE
Tech Product of the Year (hc1’s PGx Advisor) – hc1’s PGx Advisor is the healthcare industry’s first and only solution that combines patient-specific data and clinical lab testing to recommend informed improvements to the patient’s prescription plan and overall care. PGx Advisor brings the laboratory, prescriber, and pharmacists into alignment to ensure the patient receives the right prescription for their condition and genetic profile. It’s as complex as it sounds, but basically, hc1 is actually delivering on the promise of personalized medicine. READ MORE
Service Partner of the Year (KSM Consulting) – KSM Consulting is a tech, data, and management consulting firm developing cutting edge solutions for some of the nation’s most complex challenges. In 2019, the company expanded its team and offerings, including hiring and building a 22-person in-house app dev team. KSMC employs 200 people who serve over 350 clients, and the team is working to change the way that consulting is executed to achieve their mission of helping clients, coworkers, and communities thrive. READ MORE
Innovation of the Year (Anvl) – Anvl’s Automated Offline Hazard Identification helps companies predict and prevent injuries and deaths with workforce-first safety software. They are tackling a problem that has been left to chance and blamed on complexity and random variables for far too long. Anvl’s solution is already proving its potential to have a significant impact on human life by saving workers from injuries and eliminating legacy forms, checklists and paper. READ MORE
Exceptional Employer Award (Kronos Incorporated) – Kronos is the leading global workforce management and HR software provider. The Indianapolis office — known as their Tech Center of Excellence — is the company’s second-largest location with 300 employees … whom they call Kronites! The judges were particularly impressed that up to 40% of Kronos’ new hires are recent college grads, and that the company provides extensive technical onboarding and continued training as their careers advance. While many companies struggle with disengaged employees, Kronos is posting extraordinarily high employee engagement, with its highest ever, 89% in 2019. READ MORE
Large Enterprise of the Year (Republic Airways) – Republic Airways is an airline turned tech-enabled, tech-heavy company. During the Mira Awards live judging process, presenters said: “We’re not a transportation company, we’re a tech company that has airplanes.” Republic is focused on efficiency through innovation and reinvestment at all levels, not the least of which was doubling the size of their in-house software engineering and tech teams. A few of the bold ideas and programs they put into place or expanded in 2019 include their LIFT Academy flight school that’s now one of the largest in the country, their robotics program, their Crew Life app and other SaaS platforms that are solving problems that have plagued the airline industry for decades. READ MORE
Startup of the Year (Woven) – Woven is a technical screening solution that helps high-growth software teams hire faster and more effectively, while reducing bias. By using realistic work simulations instead of resumes to sort candidates, Woven uncovers hidden gems in your hiring pool so you can find talented engineers that other companies overlook. The company tripled its revenue in 2019 and expects to triple revenue again by the end of 2020. READ MORE
Scale-up of the Year – Tech Service (KSM Consulting) – KSM Consulting pursued tremendous expansion in 2019 following their acquisition in April 2019 by Renovus Capital Partners. The company grew its staff by more than 123% from 80 employees to 178 over just three years, including 85% staff growth in 2019 alone, and they grew revenue by double-digits in just eight months from the acquisition, which far surpassed their already aggressive growth goals. READ MORE
Scale-up of the Year – Tech Product (Zylo) – In just three years time, Zylo transformed itself from a concept developed by four co-founders sharing a conference table as a desk, to the leader in a brand-new software category, SaaS management. The company has grown its staff by double digits, raised more than $35 million in venture capital from some of the biggest names in the business, and doubled or nearly doubled its revenue each year it’s been in business, which it expects to do again in 2020. READ MORE
ABOUT TECHPOINT:
TechPoint is the nonprofit, industry-led growth initiative for Indiana’s technology companies and overall tech ecosystem. The team is focused on attracting talent, accelerating scale-up companies, activating the community and amplifying stories of success. For more information, please visit www.techpoint.org.
