Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMimir Corp., an Indianapolis-based developer of software used in computer science classrooms, announced on Thursday morning that it plans to expand its downtown headquarters and add up to 102 employees by 2021.
Mimir currently has 14 full-time employees. The company's founders created its flagship product, Mimir Classroom—which automates computer science grading and checks for plagiarism—while they were students at Purdue University. In 2015, while they were participating in a Silicon Valley startup accelerator, they turned it into a business, which was based in West Lafayette before relocating to Market Tower last month.
Mimir Classroom is off to a flying start and already is used at more than 80 universities worldwide.
“The Midwest is a perfect place to scale a startup like Mimir,” company CEO Prahasith Veluvolu said in a statement. “Indianapolis remains one of the most affordable cities in the nation and continues to evolve into a tech hub. That’s translating to additional funding opportunities from investors and more robust employee pools for companies like ours.”
Veluvolu created Mimir Classroom with fellow Purdue students Jacobi Petrocciani and Colton Voege. They were fed up with the quality of the feedback they were getting on computer science assignment submissions, so they set out to make software that automated the grading process for professors.
"Every time we turn in one of our programming assignments, it usually took over a month to get it back," Veluvolu told IBJ last month. "And when we did get it back, it was usually just a number on a online portal; we barely got any feedback."
Mimir later this summer will expand its Market Tower space from 3,200 square feet to 4,500 square feet. It has begun hiring for sales and engineering positions, with plans to reach 20 employees by the end of the summer. The new jobs are expected to pay nearly 50 more than the state's average wage of $21.21 an hour.
In addition to automating grading of computer science classwork, Mimir Classroom helps instructors analyze students' strengths and weaknesses. Students will soon have the option of having their computer-coding strengths matched to companies looking to recruit workers. By the end of 2017, Mimir plans to launch an additional platform that companies will be able to use during interviews to evaluate candidates' computer science skills.
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Mimir up to $1 million in tax credits and up to $200,000 in training grants based on the company’s job-creation plans. The incentives are performance-based, meaning the company can't claim them until workers are hired.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.