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Freshdesk and Reach 360 emerged as winners of the Microsoft BizSpark Startup Challenge 2011, held in Bengaluru at Hotel Lalit Ashok on June 23. The event witnessed 15 startups battling it out for the coveted prize. The winners were rewarded with Rs.18 lakh each while the runners up Zevenseas and Live Inbox were granted Rs.4.5 lakh each.

Congratulating the winners, Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager, Developer and Platform Evangelism, Microsoft India, said, “We believe the entrepreneurial spirit will play a key role in driving the growth of the Indian economy and at Microsoft, it is our attempt to nurture the startup community in the country.”

Microsoft BizSpark Challenge is a contest for startups in the field of product software to showcase their innovative business plans and receive feedback and mentorship from top investors and Microsoft. The participants were assessed on three key parameters—innovation, market potential of the business and a compelling story behind the idea. Uppaluri added, “There is a great opportunity in the mobile space for innovation, and the Cloud is where the future of IT is. Both offer ample scope for startups to come up with new solutions and take them to the market. We choose these two categories to help accelerate the development in them.”

The event was peppered with a panel discussion on Opportunities for next generation entrepreneurs with Subrata Mitra, Partner Accel Partners [India], Alok Mittal, MD Canaan India, Mukund Mohan, CEO EOVL, and Alok Kejriwal, CEO Games2Win as panelists.

Speaking on funding as a challenge for startups Mohan said, “The best funding I’ve taken is from customers; entrepreneurs must learn how to sell. It’s much cheaper than any kind of money you can get.” The discussion then moved on to identify game changing ideas as a challenge for entrepreneurs. Kejriwal said, “The market speaks a language of innovation and the idea one should look for needs to be an adaptation which can work.” Adding to his comments, Mittal reiterated the necessity to go back and study the needs of customers. “Look at businesses that are for the Indian market,” he said.

The challenge was open to startups that currently have product/IP and are leveraging Microsoft technologies. It was launched in April 2011 and saw over 400 product startups enroll for the challenge within six weeks. As many as 15 startups were short-listed for the finals.

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Bengaluru, BizSpark, Microsoft, product, startup