BizSpark India Startup Challenge:Hits misses case studies

CNBC-TV18 has been partnering through online partner yourstory.in with the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge. It’s a hunt to find India’s best technology entrepreneurs. This year the search was on for fresh ideas and vibrant leaders who can help shape the future of cloud computing and mobile applications.

The contest, this year, brought together startups addressing the needs of a bunch of different sectors from education to agriculture to entertainment. Take a look at the hits and misses.

The innovations in education to agriculture and even entertainment the Microsoft BizSpark India Startup Challenge 2012 had it all. 16 shortlisted startups from over 500 entries pitched their ideas to a curious side of entrepreneurs, investors and tech enthusiast in Bengaluru. The challenge focused on discovering cloud and mobile based solutions with startups being almost even be split between the two.

Sanket Akerkar, MD, Microsoft India says, “From a India market perspective we have traditionally seen mostly entrepreneurs focusing on the service industry.  Now we do absolutely see more of ideas that are product based. Because of what the cloud can do and how the world is truly flat those people can build products and then take them to market in a global way in a very easy way. The fact that we have a global cloud presence both in Microsoft and other vendors as well makes it easier for startups to go reach the customers.

The winners from both the cloud and mobile categories will get a chance to network with the biggest VCs in the country and USD 30000 in cash. 16 finalists will need to prove their businesses as scalable, have market potential and also showcase their execution capability.

Akerkar adds, “We look at innovation; market size, opportunity and what they are going after. We look at the team and the quality of the team and how they execute. We look at the competition that’s available to the market place. We also look at the product and the business and how it can scale and grow and then lastly we also look at the business model and how we think that will be successful over the long term.”

The stakes were high and the finalists battled it out to woo the jury. Take a look…

Arvind Pani, Founder, Reverie Language Technologies

Hi I am Arvind from Reverie Language Technologies. We are a product starter from India, products and technology startup and it’s very exciting to be in India at this point in time especially in the product and technology space where we are building products here in India.

Jitender Saran, Founder, CipherGraph Networks

CipherGraph Networks is into cloud security. We allow enterprises to move into private clouds and move onto hosted clouds like us here.

Vasan S, Founder, VDime Innovative Works

We do work on a product called Thousand Looks where we work on facial image processing and we build application for cosmetic brand, retail stores and salons where we take customers photograph and we process an image and we recommend makeup’s and styles.

While entrepreneurs like Vasan had to make do with the cash price of USD 15000, the two proud winners were Aurus Network a company that’s developed a virtual classroom solution for cloud computing and NowFloats, a location based mobile service provider.

Also watch the accompanying video.

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