A quick look at the startups picked for Microsoft Ventures Accelerator's 2013 winter programme

Microsoft Ventures has picked eight companies for its winter batch of startup accelerator programme that is currently underway. The four-month deep immersion program will end with a demo day in November 2013. In addition to the eight new startups, the accelerator has also picked another company called Scibler (from its 2013 summer batch) for the programme. Apart from these, four more companies - HasGeek, Nanobi, Tookitaki and 1000Lookz (participants of the BizSpark program in India) will also work with the accelerator during this period, taking the total to 13.

This is the first batch to join the Accelerator after the company aligned all startup-related activities under a single umbrella called Microsoft Ventures.

"We worked with several accelerators, incubators and industry bodies to source these companies. We chose them very carefully from a list of applications received across sectors like e-commerce, entertainment, digital media, education, enterprise, cloud infrastructure and mobile," said Ravi Narayan, who recently joined the Microsoft Ventures in India leadership team.

Here is a look at the startups:

AdSparx: A video ad technology platform for streaming internet video. The company uses technology to serve device independent, high quality, targeted, pre and mid-roll video ads for linear TV, live events and videos on demand.

ShieldSquare: Provides invisible and comprehensive account breach protection to users' logins.

Frrole: A social intelligence engine that performs analysis across tens of millions of data units in real-time. It uses this analysis to build a local buzz graph where Frrole knows what each neighbourhood, city and country is talking about.

Native5: Offers Native5 Prism, a next generation cloud platform that helps you create, distribute and monitor applications across desktops, mobiles and tablets.

SignEasy: Provides a software solution called SignEasy for individuals and businesses to digitally sign documents on smartphones and tablets.

TommyJams: Aims to promote budding music talent in India. It develops a transparent, hassle-free and inexpensive community of artists, venues and fans, online.

Whale Logix: A platform that helps online merchants make more money by turning potential shoppers into buyers more effectively.

Scibler: Provides machine learning and information retrieval for personal data management services.

Chance: The company is currently in the stealth mode and no information is available.