Microblogging site Twitter has decided to discontinue engineering tasks in India, a move that will lead to lay offs at its development centre in Bengaluru.

Here are the past winners of the Coolest Start-ups

What sets apart a number of the Indian VC funds from their overseas counterparts in India is also their willingness to invest in start-ups at the business-plan stage, even before these have begun earning revenue.

Founded by Anurag Srivastava and Amit Anand, Jungle Ventures is an early stage venture capital fund focussed on helping build innovative technology-led companies in Asia-Pacific.

Framebench services over 1,000 clients across the globe. It sells a unique product \"Framebench\" - an online file collaboration software that allows any video or digital file to be shared among any number of people simultaneously.

Business Today brings you snapshots from newsmakers this past fortnight.

Valerie Wagoner, co-founder and CEO, Zipdial, is busy closing Twitter's acquisition of her company, but took time out to speak briefly to Business Today.

CEO Dick Costolo announced 'Twitter Samvad', a service that would help the government and government bodies communicate with people via tweets through the SMS medium.

The social networking site has also added many filters and effects to make the experience for its users much smoother.

Today we have 500 customers including some of the biggest names like (Facebook, Disney, Unilever, Pepsi, Nestle and Coca-cola), 60 million users, 1 billion calls and we have run 10,000 campaigns, says Valerie R. Wagoner, a California native.

Though the deal size was not disclosed, reports suggest the monetary value is between $30-40 million (between Rs 185 crore-Rs 247 crore).

Taranjeet will lead the company's partnership with brands for maximising their creativity and deepening their customer engagement on Twitter's platform.

The trend, which started last year, is likely to accelerate this year.

Experts said the deal, if successful, could be a data play for Twitter, as mobile advertising becomes a big revenue earner for the company.

The truism that India's growing domestic market is a high-volume, low-margin opportunity has a negative side, writes ZipDial CEO Valerie R. Wagoner.

State Bank of India Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya made it to number one spot due to her relentless fight against bad loans.

The post-graduate management programme's 770 students received 831 offers compared with 697 last year. The school with campuses in Hyderabad and Mohali is upbeat because about 85 per cent of its students have been placed compared with around 65 per cent at this time last year.

One reason why start-ups are hiring from IITs and IIMs is that many of these companies have been founded by alumni of these institutes.

Accelerators, which mentor Internet, mobile and new technology start-ups, are gaining traction. Accelerators keep start-ups under their wings for much shorter periods than incubators do.

Your cover story, India's Coolest Startups (June 26), will not only provide a boost to the 10 listed companies but also motivate the five others in line.