India's 20 Hottest Technology Startups: Announcing Techcircle Fastrack 2012 Winners

Techcircle turned one year this month. We celebrated our first anniversary by doing what we know best, raise a toast to entrepreneurship and the technology startup ecosystem. The annual party held on February 24 in New Delhi, and attended by over 200 entrepreneurs and investors, also saw Techcircle bringing out its first and the most authentic listing of top 20 tech start-ups in India, the Techcircle Fastrackers, who could well be the game changers of digital business tomorrow.

Not surprisingly we were literally flooded with hundreds of nominations. But, unlike most such listings with a random selection of companies, Techcircle Fastrackers were handpicked by an esteemed three-member independent jury panel comprising Rahul Khanna (Managing director, Canaan Partners), Hitesh Oberoi (MD & CEO of Info Edge India, owner of Naukri.com ) and Vijay Shekhar Sharma (CMD of the mobile Internet company One97 Communications).

Together, the esteemed jury panel represented successful entrepreneurs and investors who have the pulse of what it takes to build a scalable tech start-up in India.

The start-ups were selected on the basis of market traction, unique product or service that is disrupting the existing business models and most importantly, the high potential to make it big in the coming years. The jury avoided some of the established and mature start-ups like Cleartrip, Via and Infibeam, and instead chose to pick those companies who are new and relatively unexplored while at the same time building exciting businesses.

The final selected list has a mix of firms founded by Indians locally or abroad or those headquartered in India.

The selected 20 start-ups were given a memento at the party held at India Habitat Centre (IHC), New Delhi. We will be profiling these start-ups in detail on Techcircle.in, your favourite news site covering technology and tech start-ups in India.

Techcircle would like to thank all the companies who sent us their nominations. We would like to thank all who attended the event for their support and their contributions to Magicbus, an Indian non-profit organization working with children from marginalised communities.

Techcircle Fastrackers 2012: (Not in any particular order)

Meritnation(Applect Learning Systems): - Online education and assessment company providing custom content development services with a focus on education in the K-12 segment. Read our Profile

Healthkart (Bright Lifecare): Gurgaon-based firm runs the online health store offering nutrition, diabetes, home devices, eye, personal care, beauty and baby products. Read our Profile

Cashitback (Loyalty Commerce): The online shopping portal offers cashback on every transaction by providing special incentives, product offers, special pricing, consolidated deals and online discounts. Read our Profile

Saavn : The firm owns and distributes digital rights of movies, music tracks, music videos and ringtones. Read our Profile

Octane Marketing : The company is engaged in operating and managing an online web portal Octane.in which provides email, SMS & web-marketing platform. Read our Profile

Knowlarity Communications : Knowlarity is engaged in providing cloud telephony based solutions. Read our Profile

Mettl (IndusLynk Training Services): The online platform is engaged in assessment of skills of new hires for the purpose of recruitment. Read our Profile

Zomato (DC FoodieBay Online Services): It provides online food guide and restaurant directory in India. Read our Profile

Vserv: Vserv Digital Services: Mumbai-based mobile ad network. Read our Profile

WebEngage (Webklipper Technologies): It provides a customer engagement tool that allows website owners get feedback from visitors of their website. Read our Profile

Capillary Technologies : It is a technology solutions company, offering mobile based customer management solutions for apparel retailers. Read our Profile

Vaultize (Anoosmar Technologies): It is engaged in developing software for cloud-based data protection. Read our Profile

Dexetra Software Solutions : It is engaged in the business of mobile applications development with cross-platform capabilities with some prominent apps like Iris, TryCube2, SecureKeys, AibiNox and Friday. Read our Profile

Sokrati (Bogolik Software Solutions): It offers digital marketing platform for search, social networking and display networking. Read our Profile

Practo Technologies : It is engaged in providing web based clinic management system. Read our Profile

Reach Accountant (Reach Process Outsourcing): It is engaged in accounting services through online software. Read our Profile

Wingify Software : The portal is engaged in visual optimization of web sites for increasing website sales, signups, downloads and conversions by using A/B, split and multivariate testing. Read our Profile

Unmetric (Tech Origami Software):  The company develops application software for social media intelligence through two brand names unmetric.com and EyesAndFeet.com. Read our Profile

CustomerXPs Software : The company develops customer relationship management solutions in the domains of financial services, retailers and telecom. Read our Profile

Amagi Media Labs : The tech enabled media company facilitates geographic targeting of television advertisements. Read our Profile

• Disclosure: A few of the selected Fastrackers are companies where the jury members or their companies have invested in the past.