Indianapolis-based Software-as-a-Service management company Zylo won the award for Scale-up of the Year during TechPoint’s 24th annual Mira Awards gala honoring the best of tech in Indiana.

WATCH VIDEO: Zylo CEO Eric Christopher accepts the award for Scale-up of the Year.

Founded in 2017, Zylo was the first company to recognize that organizations needed a better way to help manage their rapidly growing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) portfolios. Its groundbreaking service was a near instant success and led to the Indianapolis company’s 2020 TechPoint Mira Scale-up of the Year award. Three years later, the company returned to the Mira gala stage to take the award home again. 

In 2020, the SaaS market was a $116 billion industry. Remote work and learning demands caused by the pandemic pushed that market to $167 billion in 2022. SaaS has grown so large that for most organizations, software is their second largest operating expense after headcount. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 30 percent of organizations will rely solely on SaaS applications for their mission-critical workflows.  

Despite this growing demand, SaaS continues to be one of the most overlooked areas in business administration, rife with waste and opportunities for optimization. That makes Zylo’s value proposition even more relevant. 

According to Zylo research, companies on average use more than 300 SaaS applications, and overspend on licenses by 15 percent each year. Zylo eliminates unnecessary costs, helping companies receive a greater return on their software investment. The opportunity for savings is significant. 

Prior to Zylo, no product existed to manage SaaS, but six years later, SaaS Management is a business category covered by analyst firms such as Forrester and Gartner. Zylo continues to lead the category even as more than a dozen new entrants have emerged. 

Despite the uncertain economic times and complex capital markets of 2022, Zylo secured $36.5 million in a Series C capital raise. Over the next five years, Zylo expects to nearly triple its employee base from 130 to nearly 400 employees in Indiana and throughout the country. The company is on pace to more than triple its revenue. The company has a historical retention rate of more than 90 percent with existing customers and achieved multiple record-breaking sales quarters in 2022.  It is well capitalized for future growth and led by a strong and stable executive team that has the experience to propel Zylo on its upward trajectory.

Zylo  plans to continue developing products and services for organizations that are buying SaaS, but will also expand into developing new solutions for SaaS vendors leveraging its unique dataset and purview into SaaS purchasing, use and sentiment. The company is also partnering with global partners like SAP, Coupa and SHI to open up large revenue and market opportunities in the finance, procurement and IT spaces and help propel the organization’s growth. 

The Mira Awards judges said Zylo was the first company to recognize the need for a better way to help manage rapidly growing SaaS portfolios, and its leaders continue to prove the company’s worth and value proposition in a tumultuous economy. 

See All Award Winners from the 2023 Mira Awards Gala.

TechPoint, the nonprofit, industry-led growth initiative for Indiana’s digital innovation economy, honored the state’s top successes and innovations during the 24th annual Mira Awards gala with presenting sponsors UKG, Salesforce and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

A total of 18 award winners and honorees were chosen from the 141 outstanding people, companies and products that were selected as nominees for their achievements during the 2022 calendar year.

Fifty-two independent, volunteer judges spent more than 850 total hours evaluating applications, interviewing nominees, and selecting this year’s winners. Judges included an impressive roster of company founders, CEOs and presidents, CTOs, CIOs, engineers and other industry professionals.

TechPoint’s 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.