Finalists revealed in TheMarker-Microsoft Best Startup contest

The three finalists in TheMarker-Microsoft Most Promising Israeli Startup competition, 2007, were presented at a cocktail last night at KPMG's offices in Tel Aviv. The three are Sportingo, Oversi and Infogin.

The winner will be announced at the TheMarker Internet conference, on March 18-19 in Tel Aviv.

Sportingo is the youngest of the three. It was founded less than a year ago, feeding off the success of Web 2.0. Basically it's a site for sports news written by surfers. So far it has raised financing only from private individuals

Its business model is based on online advertising and commercial collaborations to sell products via the web.

Oversi  was founded in 2004 by Ofer Wald and Eitan Efron at the Stage-One incubator. It provides file storage services for Internet suppliers. Using its service, suppliers can cope with vast amounts of data caused by file sharing software. In December 2006, Oversi raised $6 million. The company believes it can reach sales of $5 million this year.

The third company, Infogin, is the oldest. Founded in 2000, the company developed an Internet surfing system that enables instant conversion of website content to mobile devices that support cellular Internet. The company has several collaborations in place, to convert online content to cellular. It recently began a relationship with Infosys, which creates cellular content for giants like MSN and Yahoo!. According to IVC Online, since its establishment, Infogin has raised $11.5 million from private investors.