Eight New Pacific Century CyberWorks Investments Increase Portfolio to 42
HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 3, 2000--
Range and Pace of Investments Continues
as PCCW Acts On Strategy to Expand Asian Internet Economy
and Build Diverse Internet Company Network
CyberWorks Ventures, the venture capital arm of Pacific Century
CyberWorks ("PCCW" Reuters 1186.HK; Bloomberg 1186), the technology
flagship of the Pacific Century Group, announced eight new investments
today.
Continuing its rapid investment pace, CyberWorks Ventures (CWV)
has invested in a total of 42 companies, including those announced
today, since PCCW's inception eight months ago.
The investments today reflect CWV's three-pronged strategy. CWV
invests to foster rapid growth and industry leadership across PCCW's
network and the Asian Internet economy. The division's second strategy
is to aggregate venture technologies into a turnkey server operating
system solution to provide a one-stop-shop for businesses that plan to
migrate to the web. Finally, CWV aims to build the largest, most
diverse network of Internet companies in Asia.
*T
CWV is pleased to announce the following eight new investments
finalised within the last three months:
-- PCCW has made a $US3 million investment in Beatnik, Inc.,
developer of professional audio tools and technologies
designed to sonify the Web.
-- A stake in Dotcast Inc., a broadband communications company
located in Silicon Valley enabling rich-media content,
e-commerce and communication service providers to more
effectively deliver digital products and services to
businesses and consumers. Its state-of-the art technology will
allow TV stations and cable operators to deliver high-quality
video to PCs, TVs and other Dotcast-enabled devices over their
analog and digital channels at speeds of 4.5 to 12 megabits
per second.
-- A further increase in equity shareholding in Outblaze to 46
percent. Outblaze provides customisable email, mailing list,
message boards and other services for web sites offering
private label portal services;
-- A minor stake in Palm, Inc., the number one provider of
handheld computing devices;
-- PCCW has taken a 5 percent stake in Rediff, India's largest
Internet portal, with 560,000 registered email users and 57
million page views per month as of January 2000 according to
AC Nielsen;
-- PCCW has made a 4.65 percent investment in SOHU.com, one of
the most popular; Internet portals in mainland China;
-- A stake in consumer ratings company Taste For Living, an
on-line health and wellness company that originates from the
highly acclaimed Taste For Living Cookbook by Michael Milken
and empowers people to educate themselves about nutrition and
nutrition's role in cancer prevention.
-- A 22.4 percent investment in 3Fusion. With 3Fusion's Networked
E-Commerce Infrastructure(TM) "merchants" (manufacturer,
distributor or supplier) and content providers can leverage
content and community to drive commerce. 3Fusion's
easy-to-implement e-commerce platform and embedded content
catalog enables content providers to integrate commerce into
their sites and merchants direct access to target markets.
Additionally
-- PCCW's division Pacific Convergence Cooperation (PCC) has
taken a 49% stake in Data Access, an Indian Internet service
provider.
These transactions follow 11 announced in the first quarter including:
-- Formation of $US1.5 billion venture capital fund @Ventures
Global Partners with CMGI, Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst to invest
in emerging Internet businesses in Europe, Asia and the
Americas;
-- An agreement to co-invest with Bowman Capital in selected
expansion-stage, privately held technology companies with
significant growth potential in Asian markets;
-- The formation of CMGI Asia, a 50/50 joint venture with CMGI,
to create and operate Internet-related business in the Asia
Pacific region;
-- A 12.5 percent investment in DigiScents Inc., the pioneer of
digital scent technology;
-- A 10 percent investment in iMerchants, the e-commerce
solutions provider;
-- An 8 percent stake in Intelligenesis Corporation, a software
company developing artificial intelligence technology;
-- A 12.5 percent equity stake in Magically Inc., a U.S.-based
application service provider (ASP), that develops virtual
desktop technology;
-- A 25 percent stake in pp.com, Hong Kong's first independent
property website;
-- The launch of Pacific Century SoftNet (PCCW's 50/50 joint
venture with SoftNet), which will market high speed Internet
access, technical expertise and related services and products
to Asian cable operators and their 130 million subscribers in
more than 50 Asian countries;
-- A 4.25 percent stake in tom.com, the vertical portal for China
that will focus on creating a unified database of global and
PRC Chinese Web users;
-- An investment in TurboLinux Inc., a leading international
provider of the Linux operating software;
-- A strategic stake in Weave Innovations, developers of the
StoryBox platform for the distribution of digital images and
personalized content;
*T
"Our investments are about pushing the Internet frontier in Asia
and accelerating the Internet economy's growth," said Richard Li,
Chairman of Pacific Century Group. "A parallel goal is the need to
serve our Pacific Convergence Corporation strategy, gathering the best
in content and technology that will benefit our Network of the World
service. The investments we are announcing today were made with this
in mind and we will continue to set the pace for investment in Asia."
Today's announcements also further PCCW's stated aim to be the
preferred Internet partner in Asia, the most rapidly developing
Internet market in the world. The PCCW pan-Asian service, PCC's NOW
(Network of the World), to be launched later this year, will comprise
the largest Internet distribution system in the world, with a
potential reach of 130 million households. NOW will offer the world's
first fully converged service providing interactive digital video
viewing and web access.
About Beatnik, Inc.
Beatnik, Inc. brings interactive music and sound to the Web
through its combination of technology, content and community.
Beatnik's solution includes a line of applications, production music,
sound content and software technologies that enables the integration
of interactive audio content into the Web experience, known as
sonification. Beatnik develops, markets and sells its interactive
audio solution to a community of creative professionals, potential
licensees of its technology and consumers enabling them to build and
interact with music and sound over the Web, on computers and other
digital devices. beatnik.com.
About Bowman Capital
Bowman Capital is a premier investment management firm,
specializing in both public and private technology growth companies.
Founded in 1995 and located in Silicon Valley, the firm currently
manages over $5 billion in assets. Bowman's investment philosophy is
based on intensive, fundamental research of technology companies in
various stages of the growth cycle: pre-IPO, aggressive growth, and
mature growth. The firm's private equity investments focus on leading
expansion-stage companies building the New Internet Economy.
About CMGI
With more than 60 companies, CMGI, Inc. (NASDAQ:CMGI) represents
the largest, most diverse network of Internet companies in the world.
This network includes both CMGI operating companies and a growing
number of synergistic investments through its venture capital
affiliate, @Ventures. CMGI leverages the technologies, content and
market reach of its extended family of companies to foster rapid
growth and industry leadership across its network, and the larger
Internet Economy. Compaq, Intel, Microsoft, Pacific Century CyberWorks
and Sumitomo hold minority positions in CMGI.
About Data Access
Data Access is a Delhi-based Internet service provider established
in 1999 with backing from Mr. Siddharth Ray, managing director of
Stracon India. Data Access is a Category A ISP license holder and has
the approval of the Indian government to construct and operate an
international ISP gateway from India.
About DigiScents, Inc.
DigiScents is partnering with leading web sites and interactive
media companies to scent-enable the Internet. With DigiScents Digital
Scent Technology, consumers will be able to enjoy more lifelike and
memorable experiences with scented Web sites, e-mail, movies, music,
e-commerce, interactive games, and online advertising. In October
1999, DigiScents first announced its complete solution for digitizing
and broadcasting scents over the Internet. Through a partnership with
RealNetworks(R), DigiScents ScentStream software will be
auto-downloaded to almost 100 million Real Player users. DigiScents
(www.digiscents.com) is a privately held corporation located in
Oakland, California. The company was founded in February 1999 by
Dexster Smith and Joel Bellenson. Bellenson and Smith also founded
DoubleTwist (www.doubletwist.com), formerly Pangea Systems Inc., a
leading bioinformatics company.
About Dotcast Inc.
The Dotcast Digital network will enable rich-media content,
e-commerce and communication service providers to more effectively
deliver digital products and services to businesses and consumers. Its
state-of-the art technology will allow TV stations and cable operators
to deliver high-quality video to PCs, TVs and other Dotcast-enabled
devices over their analog and digital channels at speeds of 4.5 to 12
megabits per second. The signal won't degrade the TV signal or
interfere with reception.
About Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst
Since its formation in 1989, Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst
Incorporated has completed or currently has pending more than 325
transactions with an aggregate capital value of approximately $43
billion, including invested equity of more than $3 billion in the
media and telecommunications sectors. Its principal office is in
Dallas with additional offices in New York, London and Buenos Aires.
About iMerchants
iMerchants (www.imerchants.com) is a privately held company based
in Hong Kong. It is a leading Internet electronic commerce service
provider. IMerchants' turn-key approach to e-commerce enables
companies to adopt e-commerce faster and less expensively than an
"in-house" implementation. iMerchants provides secure, fast and
reliable site hosting solutions in both shared and dedicated server
environments. IMerchants' site design and software development teams
build catalog, procurement and service delivery sites that link a
company's existing systems. Transaction and payment processing
solutions complete the iMerchants e-commerce package. iMerchants also
offers consulting services and a service menu for businessmen who want
to start up an e-commerce operation. iMerchants gives companies a
single source for Internet electronic commerce.
About Intelligenesis Corporation
Intelligenesis Corporation is a development-stage software company
pioneering a new breed of digital intelligence for the Internet
information economy. The company is developing an artificial
intelligence software architecture that understands the meaning of
concepts expressed in text, speech, and numerical data patterns. By
transforming documents and databases into a dynamic mind-like network
of associations, WebMind can distinguish meaning in unstructured text,
where the bulk of human knowledge is stored. In this way, human
experience and psychology can be quantified for use in business
analytics and decision-making. The company intends to use the WebMind
engine to develop a portfolio of advanced web-based financial and
information products and services. Two of these products are in an
advanced stage of development, and are expected for release this year.
Intelligenesis currently has approximately 90 employees located
primarily in New York City and Brazil. intelligenesis.net.
About Magically, Inc.
Magically, Inc. is the developer of the Internet-based "virtual
desktop" MagicalDesk, a suite of Web-based applications which includes
email, address book, calendar, task list, Internet bookmarks, file
storage, document viewing, and file synchronization. Magically makes
its virtual desktop available to Internet portals, content providers,
application service providers, Internet service providers, and
original equipment manufacturers. Magically customizes the virtual
desktop to seamlessly integrate into each co-brander's Internet site.
Magically also maintains its own virtual desktop web sites
(www.magicaldesk.com for PCs and www.imagicaldesk.com for Apple Mac)
to showcase its technology. Based in Redwood City, California,
Magically, Inc., is privately owned and operated. More information
about Magically and MagicalDesk is available at www.magically.com.
About Outblaze
Outblaze (www.outblaze.com) is the pioneer in the development and
provision of multilingual integrated Internet community solutions for
web sites that wish to offer their own private label portal services,
including customisable web based free e-mail, mailing list, message
board, calendar and chat services. At the time of writing, Outblaze
has signed up over 20,000 web sites and over 3 million user members
since January 1999. World-wide brand name portals powered by Outblaze
include Star TV, Newscorp's Chinabyte, Windrivers, China.com,
Chinaseek, Planet Alumni, the insurance portal Ebix, and the
Sportsmail Network.
About Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. is the leading provider of handheld computing devices
(IDC, May 1999), including the Palm III(TM), Palm V(TM) and Palm
VII(TM) series of handheld computers. The Palm OS(TM) platform is the
foundation for the market-leading handheld computers from the company
as well as products from its strategic partners such as IBM, QUALCOMM,
Franklin Covey, Handspring and Symbol Technologies. Designed to
support the increasingly mobile and geographically dispersed nature of
information management, the company's handheld solutions allow people
to carry their most critical information in their pockets. According
to IDC (May 1999), Palm Computing commands 68% of the worldwide market
for personal companies. For more information, please visit
www.palm.com.
About pp.com
Established in October 1999, pp.com is Hong Kong's first vertical
portal specially designed for the Asian property industry, delivering
a unique one-stop property solution. Headquartered in Hong Kong,
pp.com has already established operations in Beijing, Guangzhou and
Shanghai, and has plans to open offices in Singapore, Japan and Taiwan
in the coming months. The site is not owned by a developer or estate
agency, so the information provided is neutral, accurate and
constantly updated. For more information please visit
pp.com.
About Rediff
Founded in 1996, Rediff is the largest web-based online service in
India. Its service delivers news, information, free email, chat,
personal home pages and online shopping for books, music and hotel
reservations to an audience in India and Indians worldwide. The
company is also the largest website builder in India and builds
high-end websites for customers in India and worldwide. Rediff has
been rated by CNN as one of the top 50 news-sites in the world. CNN
also rated it as the most preferred site for Indians worldwide. The
company is privately held, and is headquartered in Mumbai, India.
Rediff has also filed for a Nasdaq listing. The rediff.com website can
be found at rediff.com.
PCCW and SoftNet
The launch of Pacific Century SoftNet is part of a broader
relationship between SoftNet and PCCW. In January, the companies
announced the completion of a transaction in which PCCW paid $129
million for 5 million shares (approximately 23%) of SoftNet common
stock. George Chan, Executive Vice President of Pacific Century Group,
was appointed to SoftNet's board of directors. Pacific Century Group
expects to name a second board member later this year.
About SOHU.com
SOHU.com is China's first and largest Web portal with daily page
views of over six million and registered email users of over 850,000.
SOHU.com offers a proprietary directory that has helped shape the
searching habit of Mainland Chinese. This powerful, Chinese-based
search engine was created by Internet Technologies China (ITC), a
Beijing-based Internet start-up originally backed by MIT professors
and scholars. SOHU.com is a qualitatively derived classification
system that has been designed to match the particular cultural
tendencies of the Chinese user. Its classification hierarchy is
divided into eighteen sections and houses over two hundred thousand
links. It is a user-friendly search guide that also features a search
engine. In addition to a free search service, Sohu.com also provides
20 high quality branded content channels, free email, and BBS.
About Taste For Living
Taste For Living is an on-line health and wellness company, which
originates from the highly acclaimed Taste For Living Cookbook by
Michael Milken. Their primary mission is to enable people to educate
themselves about nutrition and nutrition's role in cancer prevention.
They are also committed to raising general awareness of the importance
of healthy lifestyles and allowing consumers to make informed buying
decisions about health and wellness related products and services.
About 3Fusion
3Fusion (www.3fusion.com) was founded April 6, 1999 by two
Principal Engineers from Netscape Communications/AOL. The founders
joined Netscape Communications in January 1995 and were involved in
leading the development of several successful e-commerce products. To
build an all-star technical team, the founders recruited senior
developers from various locations and companies. The founding team has
extensive experience in Unix, NT, database, distributed computing,
e-commerce and high traffic network infrastructure design and
operations.
3Fusion developers have very innovative, scalable and fault
tolerant technology. 3Fusion has received 1st round funding of US $8
million and is on track to roll out its services in US and Asia for
partners' beta trial during Q1, 2000.
About Tom.com
Launched in December last year, vertical portal tom.com is listed
at Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) on March 1, 2000. It
aims to be a content aggregator of China by developing information and
entertainment-related businesses serving global Chinese and mainland
web users. tom.com is majority owned by Cheung Kong (40%) and
Hutchison (20%). Its partners include content providers such as China
Travel Network Co., China National Publications Import and Export
Corp., and the Chinese Academy of Science.
About TurboLinux
Founded in 1992, TurboLinux is the world's fastest-growing Linux
company with investment backing from more than 20 global hardware,
software and services companies, including BEA, Compaq, Dell, Intel,
Fujitsu Support and Services, NEC, Novell, SCO and Toshiba. A market
leader in Linux software clustering solutions and Linux
internationalization, the company's high-performance consumer and
business Linux products run on Intel, Alpha and PowerPC workstation
and server platforms and are supported globally by IBM,
Hewlett-Packard and SCO. Headquartered in San Francisco, TurboLinux
has offices in Beijing, Buenos Aires, Hamburg, Sydney and Tokyo. The
company's home page is located on the Internet at www.turbolinux.com,
in Japanese at www.turbolinux.co.jp and in Chinese at
www.turbolinux.com.cn.
About Weave Innovations
Started in 1998, Weave Innovations builds products and services
that leverage the Internet to enhance the way people communicate with
each other. The Weave Innovations management team consists of
experienced executives and engineers from storied Silicon Valley-based
companies, such as Intel Corporation, Silicon Graphics Inc., and Wink
Communications. Investors include Maveron LLC, Eastman Kodak Company,
Pacific Century CyberWorks, The Phoenix Partners, Peterson Ventures
and Ridge Ventures. For more information, please visit
www.weaveinnovations.com.
About Pacific Century CyberWorks
In less than a year, PCCW, with a market cap of more than $US30
billion on a fully diluted basis, has grown to become Asia's biggest
Internet group outside Japan, and aims to be the world's largest
broadband Internet provider. PCCW consists of three principle
operating companies.
Pacific Convergence Corporation (PCC) is poised to become the
leading global provider of broadband Internet services via NOW
(Network of the World) to be delivered through multiple broadband
platforms.
PCC's NOW is to offer the world's first fully converged service
providing interactive digital video viewing and web access. PCC will
service NOW through at least three global Internet and digital video
content production centres. Content for NOW is being provisioned from
a variety of sources and partnerships, including Trans World
International (TWI), the programming arm of IMG. As a result, NOW will
become the world's largest digital video/Internet provider of content
with unlimited access to TWI's library of 130,000 hours of archive
programming and 10,000 hours of new material produced annually.
CyberWorks Ventures (CWV) is the investment arm of PCCW. CWV
enters into partnerships and invests in local and international
information technology and Internet businesses, creating the
pre-eminent incubation environment for established and start-up
Internet businesses in Asia. CWV has invested in more than 40
companies around the world including technology enablers, e-commerce
and content companies.
Cyberport (www.cyber-port.com) is being developed by the Pacific
Century Group with the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region. The Cyberport is a flagship project to enhance the information
infrastructure in Hong Kong. To date, 15 leading multinational IT
corporations have signed letters of intent to become anchor tenants
and they are Cisco, CMGI, Hewlett-Packard, Hikari Tsushin, Huawei,
IBM, Legend, Microsoft, Oracle, Pacific Convergence Corporation,
Portal Software, Silicon Graphics, Softbank, Sybase and Yahoo!
CONTACT: Pacific Century CyberWorks
Joan Wagner, 852 2514-8883/ 9128-1155
joanwagner@pcg-group.com
or
Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.
Sandra Chu, 415/356-1017
chus@fleishman.com
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA TEXAS NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL LATIN AMERICA
ASIA PACIFIC
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: INTERNET BANKING E-COMMERCE SOFTWARE
COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS
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