By Vikram Sethi

Amazon Web Services announced the four-member team of Fantasy Shopper as the winner of the fifth annual AWS Start-Up Challenge. Fantasy Shopper was awarded $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in AWS credits, AWS premium support services for one year and technical mentorship from Amazon Web Services.

Localytics got the second place prize. The remaining five finalists were each awarded $10,000 in AWS service credits. This year AWS received more than 1,500 applications from 78 countries across the globe.

During the final round of judging, seven finalists presented their businesses to representatives from AWS and leading venture capital firms. The winners were selected based on their originality and creativity, likelihood of long-term success and scalability, how well the business addresses a need in the marketplace, and implementation of AWS solutions.

Based in Exeter, UK, Fantasy Shopper created a social game platform focused around real-world apparel. In this community application, shoppers browse actual selection from top stores in fashion centers such as London, receive “paydays” with which they make virtual purchases to create their own outfits, share their creations with others, comment on their friends’ outfits, and can even purchase the actual apparel items offline.

Localytics is a real-time mobile application analytics service that provides app developers with tools to measure usage, engagement and custom events. All data is stored at a per-event level to give customers detailed segmentation of their user’s usage, behavioral and demographic profiles.

The 2011 AWS Start-Up Challenge finalists are:

• Fantasy Shopper – UK (Exeter)
• Localytics – United States (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
• Booshaka – United States (Sunnyvale, California)
• Deputy.com – Australia (Sydney)
• Flixlab – United States (Palo Alto, California)
• Getaround – United States (San Francisco, California)
• Intervention Insights – United States (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

You can read more about the start-up challenge finalists and semi-finalists on the Amazon Web Services blog.