FreightRover wins Best New Tech Startup Mira Award
Transportation logistics and automation platform juggernaut FreightRover won the Best New Tech Startup award during TechPoint’s 19th annual Mira Awards gala honoring the best of tech in Indiana.
Trucking is the backbone of e-commerce for U.S. companies. More than 70 percent of goods move cross-country by truck, and yet the transportation industry is woefully fragmented and still heavily reliant upon antiquated and paper-based processes.
Before 2017, there was no all-encompassing solution on the market, but Indianapolis-based startup FreightRover is poised to bring together more than 550,000 for-hire carriers and the shippers responsible for 10.5 billion tons of annual transported goods. From load selection through delivery and payment, FreightRover automates freight flow for users. Put simply, FreightRover has taken fifteen manual processes and reduced them into three automated steps.
The Mira Awards judges were impressed by the tremendous growth of the company, which grew to 27 employees in its first six months and raised $9 million from private wealth investors, as well as its prolific development in two of Indianapolis’ strongest industries — business-to-business software and transportation logistics.
In 2017 alone, FreightRover launched its software product, analyzed user feedback, built functionality never seen before in transportation, partnered with more than ten service providers to combine processes, and contracted industry-leading customers across the country. The startup expects to double in size again creating an additional 30 new jobs in 2018, and continue growing by triple digits for the next two years.
In addition to load management, FreightRover also thrives within the fintech space, streamlining the laborious carrier payment process through its back-office automation capabilities. FreightRover’s technology reduces the time of traditional carrier payments from 30 days or more to just 24 hours. This improvement to payment speed and cash management allows businesses to focus on their core priority of freight movement, rather than freight payments. With an industry already short 40,000 drivers, FreightRover keeps fleets’ wheels turning and freight moving to consumers.
The judges believe FreightRover’s rapid market adoption is an indication of huge potential growth in the near term with more than 35,000 carriers now participating in the FreightRover ecosystem, hundreds of logistics services providers and shippers are customers, and organizations such as Gartner are spending time with the startup’s senior leaders to determine how they redefine one of the Gartner Magic Quadrants.
TechPoint, the growth initiative for Indiana’s tech ecosystem, honored the successes and innovation of Indiana companies, entrepreneurs, educators, and other leaders at The JW Marriott Indianapolis during the 19th annual Mira Awards gala presented by Angie’s List, Infosys, and Salesforce.
A total of 15 award winners and two honorable mentions were chosen from the 100+ outstanding companies, organizations, and individuals who were selected as nominees this year out of the 205 applications received highlighting achievements during the 2017 calendar year.
SEE ALL WINNERS
Fifty-two independent, volunteer judges spent more than 850 total hours reviewing and ranking applications, interviewing nominees, and selecting this year’s winners. Judges included company founders, CEOs and presidents; CTOs, CIOs and software developers; professors and chancellors from Indiana universities; design, human resources and sales professionals, and a variety of other subject matter experts.
The Mira Awards are named after the first of the brilliant variable stars to be discovered – the Mira Star. It is also the Latin root meaning “worthy of admiration, wonderful, marvelous.” The awards represent the best of tech in Indiana each year.
