Impressive line-up of winners at Thames Valley Tech Awards

The Thames Valley Tech Awards made a welcome return as a live event, attracting a large and enthusiastic audience eager to celebrate the region’s top tech businesses.

The event at Readings’ Select Car Leasing Stadium recognised outstanding achievements in a dozen categories. Among those collecting awards were Content Guru, the Tech Company of the Year, and double-winner Reaction Engines.

The outstanding line-up of finalists included software developers, telecoms providers, hardware suppliers and manufacturers, cloud solutions companies, science-based businesses, people working in artificial intelligence and space technology.

Emphasising the diverse nature of award entrants, Richard Thompson, Managing Director at The Business Magazine, said: “We wanted to make sure that the Tech Awards ranged across as many fields as possible and truly reflected the diverse nature of tech in the Thames Valley.”

The award’s headline sponsor was Westcoast, with sponsors Verlingue, Hays, Gresham House, EY, Pennington Manches Cooper, BDO, Blake Morgan, Morgan Lovell, Egnyte and Boyes Turner with NatWest also supporting the event.

Thompson thanked the hard work of the sponsors and independent judges: “We had many, many excellent entries, and I’d like to thank the judges – who diligently assessed the strengths and potential of the contenders. We have been truly impressed with the tech companies who have entered this year’s awards.”

During the evening, guests raised £3,200 for Charlbury-based Special Effect, a charity that helps transform the lives of physically disabled people across the world through the innovative use of technology.

Holding everything together with wit, anecdotes and some gentle ribbing of the audience was host Lucy Porter, the comedian, podcaster, playwright and a regular on BBC Radio 4.

And the winners are…

High Growth Tech Company of the Year

Winner: Eque2

“We have experienced consistent growth in the last five years, winning around 300 new customers a year. They sign three- to five-year contracts so we get a long-term commitment with recurring revenue. The company headcount has increased from about 100 a few years ago to 160 and we expect it will exceed 200 in the next 18 months. We grew during the Covid-19 pandemic as many of our construction sector customers realised that they needed to invest in our software to help contain their costs. We are now moving more products to the cloud to continue our growth.” Richard Boston, Marketing Director, Eque2

Finalists were

• Ciphr
• Eque2

Cyber Security Company of the Year

Winner: Surevine

“Our customers are mainly in the UK government, defence, military and national security. There is a lot of change in the world around cyber security and also a change in the rules of who can share what with whom. Our business is about helping customers to keep their people joined up and able to share information. Since the Covid-19 pandemic demand has gone through the roof as customers need to accommodate hybrid working, which has presented new challenges for security.” Stuart Murdoch, Founder and CEO, Surevine

Finalists:

• Bridewell
• CyberCrowd
• Egnyte
• FSP

Emerging Tech Company of the Year

Winner: QBox

“QBox has been going for about two years. We have developed our own algorithm to help solve problems companies have using chatbot technology. We sell to about 20 businesses, including Vodafone and Sky. We help chatbots to better understand humans so they can automate more of their requests. This market is expanding by about 30% year on year. So far, we have been reaching the early adopters of chatbot technology and are now going to the mass market so we are expanding quickly. We have increased staff numbers 100% in the last year to about 40 people in the UK, Spain, Asia and the US.” Benoit Alvarez, CEO, QBox

Finalists:

• Brainomix
• measurable.energy

Sustainable Tech Company of the Year

Winner: Reaction Engines

“In the last couple of years, we have transformed our aerospace heat exchanger propulsion technology for single-stage take-off to orbit and are focusing on sustainable solutions for net zero carbon applications. One of the key areas is transportation. Currently, we are working on a twin-prop aircraft running on hydrogen. Our expertise and capabilities in hydrogen-powered technology are key differentiators for us at a time when interest in low carbon travel is growing.” Tom Burvill, Director of Applied Technologies, and Carrie Lambert, Head of Sustainability, Reaction Engines

Finalists:

• Astun Technology
• Dynamon
• MCS Rental Software
• measurable.energy
• MoA Technologies

Tech Employer of the Year

Winner: IRIS Software Group

“Our approach is to do all the employee-focused and wellbeing things that we possibly can. That includes monthly employee surveys, so people take part in shaping what the company delivers. We hold regular sessions to capture employee feedback, where managers are able to respond in real-time. We are very ambitious in setting targets with objectives and key results to deliver on, so we look to improve every year by doing things better. IRIS Software is very acquisitive, so the idea of there being ‘one IRIS’ is really important to us. It means we have to capture what is great about the businesses we acquire and mirror this in the company by absorbing the best of their cultures.” Lizzy Barry, Human Resources Director, IRIS Software

Finalists:

• CV-Library
• Dynamic Planner
• One Beyond
• Reaction Engines

Tech Leadership Team of the Year

Winner: One Beyond

“We made two recent acquisitions and absorbing new staff was a challenge for the leadership team to solve. Integrating people into the business and doing it well is all about planning. We spent a lot of time before each acquisition planning to get things right. We have set up a talent management team in the last year and a management system to track employees’ progress through continuous evaluation. For us, leadership isn’t about doing annual reviews but assessing people every day. That’s more important than ever to us as we have increased our headcount by about 40% to 340 people with offices in the UK, Spain, Hungary and Romania.” Nick Thompson CEO, One Beyond

Finalists:

• Eque2
• FSP
• IRIS Software Group
• Ticketer

Tech SME of the Year

Winner: Diffblue

“We’re successful because of three things: we’ve built a deep bench of talent from all over the world, we have a respectful ‘low drama’ culture where everyone can do their best work, and we focus on solving an incredibly difficult problem that has a huge economic impact – there is far more code to be written than there are people to do it. Our product codes 250 times faster than a human and never gets bored, writing the kind of test code that developers find tedious, repetitive and error-prone. It allows customers to ship software faster and more frequently, with fewer bugs.” Mathew Lodge, CEO, Diffblue

Finalists:

• ALL.SPACE
• FSP
• Responsiv Solutions
• Re-universe

Innovative Tech Company of the Year

Winner: Reaction Engines

“Our company culture is about recruiting people who are enthusiastic about what they do, where we are empowered to bring ideas to the table – people don’t feel they need to be at a certain level in the company to do this. That’s true for our engineers and developers as well as those running processes like HR, finance, sales and marketing. We have a culture that fosters innovation and once you have got this it is a virtuous cycle. We are interested in solving difficult problems but recognise that innovation is the combination of invention and commercialisation – you need both to succeed.” Felix Newman, Thermal Engineer, and Dominic Hall, Deputy Lead for Aerospace, Reaction Engines

Finalists:

• ALL.SPACE
• Content Guru
• Occuity
• Strategic Imperatives
• Ticketer

Tech Start-Up of the Year

Winner: Occuity

“As a medtech company, it takes a long time to come to market as you need to go through trials and approvals that need funding. We have been through a number of investment funding rounds that went very well, mainly because what we are doing is very worthwhile – technology that screens for diabetes is a benefit to society. We have grown from two people a couple of years ago to almost 40 today. Our first machine is due to come to market early next year and our main product a year after that. We are initially targeting opticians, followed by the NHS and healthcare sector generally. Then we will go to people with diabetes, which offers us a big opportunity." Dan Daly, CEO and Founder, Occuity

Finalists:

• measurable.energy
• Jarvo

Life Sciences & Health Tech Company of the Year

Winner: PrecisionLife

"Our unique capability is in gaining insights from very small datasets using our mathematical framework to find answers where no one else can. When the Covid-19 pandemic began, we completed a study over one weekend on fewer than 1,000 patients as soon as data was released. We obtained some of the very first insights into why people were likely to get Covid-19. We were coming up with genes that no-one had linked to Covid-19 which seemed novel at the time. Now, there years later, many of the genes have been validated by other, larger companies." Veronique Bouchet, Chief Medical Officer, and Krystyna Taylor, Senior Portfolio Manager, PrecisionLife

Finalists:

• Brainomix
• Lindus Health
• Mdgroup
• Occuity
• OMass Therapeutics

International Tech Company of the Year 

Winner: ESP Global Services

"A key to our success is our ability to provide customers with exactly what they want in terms of having a single point of contact locally anywhere in the world. This has a significant positive impact for customers, whether they are in Europe, the US or Asia-Pacific. We have recently expanded our presence in India from 40 to 120 people. The company is growing exponentially and we now have a headcount of over 700 people. Looking ahead, we should end this year on £41 million turnover and in 2024 expect to achieve in excess of £65 million." Andy Jenner, CEO, ESP Global Services

Finalists:

• E3D
• Egnyte
• MCS Rental Software
• RED ICT

Thames Valley Tech Company of the Year

Winner: Content Guru

"The innovative element in our technology is our customer knowledge system, which offers a cost-effective and easy-to-use way for customers to collect data from lots of different places and serve it up in one place to address their customers' needs. We call it omni-data and omni-channel – taking data that is already there and assembling and storing it differently. The Covid-19 pandemic created huge demand at very short notice. We responded with agility and speed in a short timeframe, working on some very big projects for clients. We were mobilising solutions in days rather than months for them." Edward Winfield, Director of Global Partnerships, Content Guru

Finalists:

• Aker Systems
• Diffblue
• Eque2
• ESP Global Services
• Ticketer