In a contest being run by TATA and NEN that claims to be “the first ever people’s choice awards for identifying, showcasing and supporting the highest-potential young companies in India,” a startup microblogging service has joined the fray.

Kwippy, a unique microblogging platform created by Dipankar Sarkar, is one of the startup nominees. Take a look at their nomination page and consider giving them a vote. You’ll need an account on the website to vote online, but you can also text HOT<space>106 to 56767.

What is TATA NEN Hottest Startups?

With an exploding economy and more and more high-impact startups flourishing in India, the TATA NEN Hottest Startup Awards aim to bring out the best of the best through community driven voting and a star judging panel. The winners will receive significant business support from the likes of IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, Microsoft and NEN, with possible admission to incubations and access to funds of over 50 lakhs ($100,000 USD) for each winner.

The startups are judged with the following characteristics in mind:

• Innovative in operations, product or service, or marketing
• Solving hard problems
• Gaining traction - either with increasing number of customers or in research and development
• Have the potential to reshape their industry
• Exhibit a great combination of passion & opportunity

Does Kwippy Have a Chance?

Though still in invite-only mode, Kwippy seems to be gaining traction in India and across the globe. They’ve already garnered themselves a community manager and have had Ping.fm integration since July. You could argue they haven’t really solved a hard problem, but they have added value to conversations with their unique take on microblogging. I’d also venture to say they’ve had a hand in helping to shape the microblogging industry as a whole with the features and functions they’ve designed.

Judging by the way things are shaping up so far I’m not sure they’re going to make the final shortlist, but its still great to see them nominated and making it into the public eye.

You can stop by and give them a vote or text HOT<space>106 to 56767 to show your support.

For any microblogging platform, the community drives the life or death of the system. Some users left Twitter for Pownce when it first launched and others left Twitter to rally behind Plurk during consistent fail whale sightings. Kwippy, a microblogging platform out of India, is aiming to stay a step ahead by investing early in a committed community manager that can help them listen to users and engage with their audience.

What Does a Community Manager Do?

Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), Sr Analyst at Forrester Research, has a great community manager job description and it looks like Matthew Phillips will be following it fairly closely, at least as described by Mayank Dhingra, Kwippy CEO:

In an effort towards having better community interaction and engagement we’ve extended our team to include Matthew Phillips, popularly known as kestrachern. Apart from communicating with you guys and helping you out in case of any issues Matthew would also help us manage the problems created by time zone difference better.

How Will a Community Manager Help Kwippy?

With a team generally based in India and a product that is being used across the globe, a remote community manager located in the US makes a lot of sense. Matthew is able to stay involved during one part of the day while the Indian team watches the other half. Without having to worry about fixing bugs or pushing new features like other parts of the team, Phillips is able to focus on the community full time and make sure users are happy.

I caught up with him on Kwippy one day after hearing about his appointment to discuss a few questions I had. We had a great discussion about posting via Ping.fm and how it may impact the communities on each of the sites receiving posts.

Kwippy made a good decision in selecting Matthew and looks to be headed in the right direction by recognizing the value he can bring to their community.