Bangalore: For technology startups across India, siliconindia Startup City 2009 turned out to be a multifaceted platform allowing them to flex their muscles and warn the corporate biggies that they ought to be counted upon.

Unlike the last year's Startup City, this year's event saw some startups clinch awards after their performances were evaluated by expert panels of judges comprised of highly experienced venture capitalists (VCs) and well established entrepreneurs. Mobile technology player Mapmy India won the Sun Microsystems-siliconindia Award; Web Bazaar, which helps small businesses to get online, bagged Amazon-siliconindia award and location based service provider Interchain Solutions received Nokia Forum award. Bakshish Dutta, General Manager - Startups and Emerging Markets, Sun Microsystems India, Mukesh Prasad Singh, General Manager - FPS, Amazon India, Prakash Sayini, Forum Nokia India Lead distributed the awards during the CEO conclave held as part of Startup City event on June 6th.

Apart from these special awards, best startups from six IT segments such as Internet, Mobile, Software, IT Services, Education and Embedded were identified. These award winning companies include Glopore IMS in IT services; Funds India in Internet; In4 Velocity in Software; Varnam Infomedia in Education; Saankhya Labs in Embedded and Onze Technologies in Mobile segment. Awards were given based on the following criteria: the company overview, market opportunity, the team, solution value proposition, competitive positioning, growth plans, go-to-market plan, current Status and investment opportunity.

The judges who did the evaluation included Mukul Singhal, Canaan Partners; Jagan Rao, Director, Grow-Z; Tejas M Sati, Axon Ventures; Srini Vudaygiri, Lightspeed Ventures; Bharathi Jacob, Seedfund; Venkatesh Ananthanarayan, Axon Ventures; Krishna Jha, Telnet Ventures; Deepak Dhamija, Ventureast; Saurabh Mehta, Indavest Ventures; Ravishanker GV, Sequioa Capital; Sarayu Srinivasan, Intel Capital; Ganapathy Subramaniam, NASSCOM Innovation fund; Deepak Gowda, UTI Ventures; Gaurav Saraf, Epiphany Ventures; Ramesh Radhakrishnan, Artiman Ventures; Arvin Babu, Greylock, Ashwin Raghuraman, Nasscom India Innovation Fund and Karthik Srivatsa, Lightspeed Ventures.

Over 5000 people from different walks of the IT industry thronged NIMHANS Convention Center in Bangalore to attend siliconindia Startup City, which also had participation from over 500 CEOs, 50 VCs and many entrepreneurs.