Temasek Capital announced that it has launched "inCube", an innovative incubation programme aimed at helping and supporting startups, early stage and established technology companies bring their products and services to world markets. To be marketed under the brand name "inCube", the programme will leverage on Temasek's extensive network of companies and global business partners to offer incubatees a unique combination of seed funding, network support, facilities, management support and branding.

2. Mr Tan Soo Nan, Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Capital, explained, "We want to capitalise on the strong growth in R&D activities in Singapore as well as in other parts of the world. inCube is not just mere physical space. It allows the incubatees to interact with a suite of complementary services and affinity partners, ranging from financial management support to marketing, human resources and research institutes. What sets inCube apart from other incubators is our ability to offer incubatees access to global markets, particularly China and India, through our network of incubator facilities. inCube is therefore well-positioned to transfer new technology and business concepts into Singapore, and help Singapore companies accelerate their growth and expand globally."
3. inCube is actively developing a global network of incubator facilities to foster synergies, and has set up three centres in three technology cities in Asia - Singapore, Chennai (India) and Shenzhen (China). There are plans to link inCube with some of the leading incubators in other technology cities in Australia, Europe, Japan, Korea and the United States.
4. For a start, inCube has signed on two incubatees: eGurkha and Bijitec. eGurkha is a software company that has developed a suite of monitoring applications which helps e-businesses to improve the reliability and responsiveness of their web sites through effective and proactive monitoring. eGurkha, which was originally based in India, is now headquartered in Singapore with subsidiaries in India and USA. inCube has made an equity investment of S$7 million in eGurkha.
5. Mr Srinivas Ramanathan, CEO of eGurkha said, "inCube, with the strong Temasek brand name behind it, will contribute significantly towards our initial marketing efforts in Singapore and the rest of Asia. Once we have developed a strong foot hold in Asia, we can then penetrate the US market with our superior features and competitive pricing"
6. Bijitec, into which inCube has invested S$2 million, specialises in software products that enable handwritten messages to be edited and transmitted via a variety of platforms, such as personal computers, PDAs and mobile phones, including via short messaging service (SMS) on mobile phones. Bijitec's software is especially suited for ideographic languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian and Mid-Eastern languages. Bijitec has signed a co-operation agreement with ZTE, a leading telecommunications company listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange in China. Under the agreement, ZTE will incorporate Bijitec's software in its new range of mobile phones to be launched in 2001.
7. Mr Dave Chen, CEO of Bijitec commented, "Our target customers are the telecommunications and IT companies. With inCube and Temasek Capital as our partner, we will be able to leverage on their strong global network of telecommunications and IT industry players. This is a great boost to our growth prospects."

About Temasek Capital

8. Temasek Capital is the direct investment arm of Temasek Holdings. Temasek Capital seeks investment opportunities around the world. Its focus is on traditional private equity opportunities, as well as early to mid-stage technology and life sciences related investments. Temasek Capital aims to be the investor of choice for companies in Singapore and overseas.

Please see fact-sheets below for more on inCube, eGurkha and Bijitec.

TEMASEK CAPITAL INCUBATION PROGRAMME

Temasek Capital has initiated an incubation programme, known as inCube, which is an integrated approach to providing support and added value to startups and early stage technology companies to accelerate their growth. Incubatee companies adopted by inCube are provided with seed funding, facilities, management services, branding and network support.

Seed Funding: Startups and early stage companies that meet our investment criteria are provided with seed funding. The amount depends on the funding required. We will also assist and/or participate in subsequent rounds of funding.

Facilities: inCube starts off with three incubation centres in Singapore, Chennai (India) and Shenzhen (China). Incubatees are offered space in these facilities, which are serviced with basic administrative support and broadband connectivity. The available space is 3,600 sq ft in Singapore, 8,600 sq ft in Chennai and 25,000 sq ft in Shenzhen.

Management Services: inCube provides accounting services as well as financial management support. The inCube management team, who has extensive operating and startup experience in technology companies, can mentor the incubatees and provide strategic direction and advice.

Branding: As investees of Temasek Capital, the incubatees enjoy recognition and credibility by being associated with the "Temasek" brand name. In addition, we are building up the inCube brand so that the name inCube will trigger association with successful startups from our various incubation centres.

Network Support: We have established, and will continue to expand, networks that provide value added support to and strategic alliances with our incubatees:

(a) Temasek Network: The Temasek network consists of major companies in Singapore encompassing a very extensive range of industries in manufacturing, financial, logistics, telecommunications and other services, as well as investee companies in all parts of the world. Incubatee companies in inCube can explore business opportunities and synergistic linkages with companies in the Temasek network.

(b) Affinity Partner Network: We are developing partnerships with domestic and international professional firms and individuals who have expertise in legal, human resource, marketing, communications and other fields. The objective is to secure top quality services at competitive rates and in some cases to effect payment through stock options in lieu of cash. We are also building partnerships with technology providers and research institutes.

(c) Incubator Network: We are developing a global network of incubator facilities, some of which we own and manage, while others are joint ventures and affiliations with existing leading incubators. The objective is to foster synergies between an incubatee of one facility with an incubatee of another, and to enable an incubatee to transplant its technology or business concept from one country to another in a more effective and speedy way.

The following chart depicts the network relationships:

Investment Focus : inCube focuses on the following technologies:

• Communications, wireless
• Application service providers (ASP)
• Enabling software
• Artificial intelligence, speech

This is not a static list, as other technologies and applications will be considered on a case by case basis.

To optimise the benefits of synergies, inCube adopts a cluster strategy where incubatees with related and complementary products and services are housed together so that they can tap on each other's expertise and together can provide a total solution.

inCube has signed on two incubatees : eGurkha and Bijitee. For more information on them, please see their websites at http://www.egurkha.com and http://www.bijitec.com

Contact inCube at:

inCube Singapore
Contact: Wong Lin Hong
Add: 10 Anson Road #05-20, International Plaza, Singapore 079903
Tel: (65) 6423-1548
e-mail: lhwong@temasek.com.sg

inCube Chennai
Contact: H R Srinivasan
Add: No.1 Subbaraya Avenue, Abhiramapuram, Chennai 600 018, India
Tel: 91-44-4987199/ 6466-2521 (office) or 91-9841017982 (mobile)
e-mail: sri@temasek.com.sg

Contact: Ravi Krishnasamy
Tel: (65)6320-0797
e-mail: ravikri@temasek.com.sg

Shenzhen Innovation Center Co, Ltd
Contact: Leng Bing Feng
Add: South Area, The High and New Technology Industrial Park,
Shenzhen, China
Tel: (852)25247711
e-mail: bingfeng@temasek.com.sg

EGURKHA PTE LTD

eGurkha is a software company that has developed a suite of monitoring applications for e-businesses. As the web has evolved from being an information exchange medium to a place where real business is transacted, it has become critical for e-businesses to ensure that their web sites remain available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Moreover, with the increased competition among the dotcoms and their brick and mortar counterparts, e-businesses have to ensure that their web sites offer the best experience for their customers. One of the primary ways in which e-businesses can improve the reliability and responsiveness of their web sites is through effective, proactive monitoring. Monitoring of all the components of the e-business infrastructure including the network links, web and application servers, databases, payment gateways, etc., is necessary to provide administrators with an integrated view of the system. Moreover, correlation across these components is necessary for detecting and correcting problems soon after they happen.

The company's first product, eGurkha Enterprise includes intelligent software agents distributed at critical points inside and outside an e-business infrastructure. These agents report a variety of statistics in real time to an eGurkha manager, which analyzes, correlates, and presents a user-friendly web interface to an administrator. eGurkha's software is designed based on web architecture and is hence scalable to handle large e-business infrastructures. Moreover, the company's patent-pending single click problem diagnosis capability enables e-businesses to instantly identify and fix problems, even before these problems affect their customers. The software currently runs on the Solaris and Linux operating systems, while ports for Windows NT and 2000 platforms are under development.

eGurkha is also developing monitoring products specifically targeted at the growing Internet Data Center (IDC) market. The eGurkha ASPlite product that is under development will allow IDCs to offer value-added monitoring services to their e-business customers, providing personalized views of the e-business infrastructure for customers. Through its monitoring center in Chennai, India, eGurkha plans to offer 24*7 remote monitoring services (eGurkha RMS) which e-business can outsource monitoring of their e-business infrastructure.

The company is headquartered in Singapore with subsidiaries in India and USA. eGurkha is likely to concentrate its initial marketing in Asia, particularly in Singapore. Once it has developed reference sites in Asia, eGurkha believes it can penetrate the US market with its superior features and competitive pricing.

For further information, please log on to the company's website at: http://www.egurkha.com

BIJITEC PTE LTD

Bijitec is a software development company based in Singapore that is at the stage of launching software products that enable handwritten messages to be edited and transmitted via a variety of platforms, such as PC's, PDA's and mobile phones, including via SMS (short messaging service) on mobile phones.

Bijitec has an office in Shanghai for R&D and marketing. A cooperation agreement has been signed with ZTE of China, a leading telecommunications company listed in Shenzhen, whereby ZTE will incorporate Bijitec's software in its new range of mobile phones to be launched in 2001.

Bijitec's software is designed particularly for mobile and pen computing applications. The stroke-based software enables writing, editing, printing and transmitting of handwritten messages. It is compact enough for mobile phone applications. The software is suited for ideographic languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian and Mid-Eastern languages.

Alternative technologies for ideographic language processing are handwriting recognition software, bit-map imaging, and code-based software. Handwriting recognition software is slower, not accurate and requires more computing power than the Bijitec software. Bit-map imaging software requires more storage space and does not allow editing. Code-based software (either using keys to represent strokes or using transliterations) is cumbersome to use.

While there are other stroke-based software, Bijitec's software optimises between stroke accuracy and storage space. The storage space for each character is reduced to between 10 and 40 bytes (depending on complexity) by taking fewer sampling points and using efficient compression algorithms, without unduly compromising readability. Other software requires more than 100 bytes per character.

As Bijitec's software enables ease of use to a very large SMS market popular with youths in those countries with ideographic languages, we believe the growth prospects for Bijitec are very good.

For more information on Bijitec, please see the company's website at: http://www.bijitec.com

For media enquiries, please contact:

Eva Ho (Ms)
Manager, Corporate Communications
Temasek Holdings (Pte) Ltd
Tel: 6828-6763
Fax: 6828-6263
e-mail: evaho@temasek.com.sg