From university spinouts and one-person outfits making a big impact to incubators and fast-growing new companies about to make it big, this award rewards new ideas, the potential for change and commercial success in companies established in the past 5 years.
The judges will base their decision on the following criteria:
- Be a start-up, incubator, spinout, or new company that has been trading for less than 5 years in the United States or Canada
- Able to demonstrate sound science, research and/or technological developments that back up your business
- Commercial potential or success: Evidence of commercial interest, success or potential market applications (if not yet launched)
- Whether the idea, product, or initiative has the potential to be a ‘game-changing’ innovation in the developing personalized nutrition space
- What gives your idea, product, or initiative the ‘X factor’— something that makes it stand out from the crowd and edge out the competition (including evidence to back up claims)
Entries close on March 14, 2025 at 11:55 p.m. (Central Time) and will be reviewed by the NutraIngredients-USA Awards Judging Panel of independent industry judges.
Finalists will be confirmed and notified in May, and winners will be announced during an awards presentation in Chicago on July 14, 2025. The cost of an entry is $299.
Past winners
Health technology company Nimble Science took home last year’s Start-Up Award for its GI analytics platform and home-use kit that uses a passive ingestible capsule to deliver data directly from the small intestine.
“With so much of the nutrition industry focused on digestive health solutions, Nimble Science’s smart pill technology has game-changing implications for unraveling the complexities of the human gut,” the judges said. “The platform’s SIMBA capsule also distinguishes itself by presenting a credible and tangible diagnostic tool rooted in research to advance the promise of ingestible devices and deliver actionable data for personalized microbiome interventions.”
The 2023 Start-Up Award went to Radicle Science, a proof-as-a-service provider that combines double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled design with an AI-driven, crowdsourced, virtual, direct-to-consumer approach to increase the speed, scale and diversity of clinical trials at a reduced cost.
“Radicle Science presents an amazing model that converges technology with traditional approaches to democratize clinical trials and solve the ‘proof gap’ between natural, non-prescription health products and pharmaceutical drugs,” the judges said.
To view the requirements for this category, click here to download.
