Timely was a co-winner of the award with Haka Tours, of Auckland.
Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce said the winners of the awards were great New Zealand businesses from a diversified range of industries competing and succeeding on the world stage.
"I am very optimistic about the future for internationally focused Kiwi companies and New Zealand’s export sector overall."
Timely chief executive and co-founder Ryan Baker said Kiwi culture was a driving force behind the passion and determination to take Timely to a global market.
"As Kiwis, we think globally from day one. It makes us hungry and audacious on the world stage. It makes us smart about how we reach markets. It makes us grateful every day that we get to do it from a beautiful place to call home."
Other start-ups should design their business so that attracting and retaining a customer worked as well in New York as it did in New Lynn, he said.
The win came at a time when Timely was executing plans to drive growth in international markets, with a focus on Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, following the launch of the new iOS app and becoming an Apple mobility partner.
"We are thrilled to win the award. It’s recognition of many years’ hard work by a very smart and dedicated bunch of people. There’s clearly a big global appetite for our product and we’re moving fast to make sure we capture the opportunity," he said.
Data warehousing company Wherescape was the supreme winner in the 2016 awards and judges were impressed by its ability to turn big data into big business.
The company, which also won the best medium business award, develops automation software for organisations to manage and analyse their big data. Founded in 2002, Wherescape originally started as a business intelligence consultancy within New Zealand and turned a few years ago to providing software products globally that help make business decisions more quickly and cheaply.
The company is based in Auckland and Portland, Oregon and has customers in 26 countries after recently expanding into Asia. The United States is the company’s largest and fastest-growing market, where clients include GE, Nike and the Dallas Cowboys.
