Meet Voatz, a 2017 alum and $50K winner that creates a mobile election voting platform.

Secured with the blockchain, smart biometrics, and real-time ID verification, Voatz enables citizens to vote in all kinds of elections or voting events on their phones or tablets. The platform is currently being piloted by some town governments, state political parties, university student governments, and labor unions. Voatz will soon be accessible to a wider audience in early 2018.

We had a chance to catch up with Nimit Sawhney, Founder & CEO, about his experience going through the MC accelerator:

Take us back to MassChallenge Awards… what was going through your mind when you heard your startup name called to the stage?
It was a mix of gratefulness, relief, and surprise all at the same time. We had worked really hard over the summer and fall to achieve some of our target KPIs, but at the same time there were so many awesome companies in the cohort that I knew the competition was going to be very tough.

As a winner, how do you plan to use the cash prize to further accelerate growth?
Were planning to use the cash to start building out our sales and business development team.

What would you say has been the key driver of your success throughout the program?
Focusing on our key KPIs and acting on the advice we received from our advisors and mentors.

What has been the hardest lesson to learn?
It is relatively easy to come up with a great idea. Executing on it and building a team to do it is the real hard part.

What advice do you have for startups thinking about applying to MC?
Its a great opportunity to learn from awesome mentors and utilize the power of a tremendous network, which can help your startup scale and succeed.