Singapore Telecommunications : Singtel Future Makers names seven winning Singapore social impact start-ups

Singapore, 11 October 2016 - Following a pitch battle involving 12 outstanding finalists chosen from a pool of over 70 applicants, Singtel has today announced seven winning Singapore social impact start-ups from its inaugural Singtel Future Makers programme.

Each recipient will receive cash funding of up to S$20,000. Over the next six months, they will also benefit from access to business workshops, mentoring and coaching support from Singtel and its partner network - the Community Chest, SPD, iMDA Labs, raiSE and UNFRAMED. This is on top of networking opportunities as well as potential commercialisation opportunities with the Singtel Group and its regional mobile associates. iMDA Labs will also provide free co-working space to recipients for six months.

Singtel Vice President of Group Corporate Social Responsibility, Mr Andrew Buay, said: 'Singtel's Future Makers are those who can leverage technology and innovation to address a real social challenge faced by vulnerable members of our community. After a rigorous selection process, the judging panel felt these seven recipients stood out with the best plans to enable positive change. We are excited about the positive social impact that they can create.'

The next six months will see the seven newly-minted Future Makers refine their business models and scale up while pursuing their social causes. They are:

Bompipi
Bompipi runs an online marketplace (Bompipi.com) that sells popular fast-moving consumer goods to Singapore consumers, contributing part of their profits to non-profit organisations. It also incentivises customers to volunteer with community partners, allowing them to convert volunteer points to rebates or discounts for other purchases made online.

CaptionCube
Using a cloud-based platform and speech recognition technology, CaptionCube provides high-quality, fast captioning, transcription, and subtitling services for e-learning and media content providers who are inclusive to a hearing impaired audience. They employ persons with disabilities who work remotely on the transcription, giving them flexibility and convenience.

Enabled
Through the Empathy Training Simulation App, Enabled provides empathy training and experiential workshops to empower school students to be advocates for persons with disability.

GIVE.asia
GIVE.asia is a free-to-use platform that empowers people and organisations to create crowdfunding and donation campaigns for charities in a matter of minutes, without a designer or developer.

Irisada
Irisada is creating a specialised marketplace for the special needs community to find hard-to-reach products all in one place. Through intuitive search functions, curation and other special features, it hopes to connect buyers to solutions that would help them enjoy a higher quality of life while connecting sellers to their target markets.

Jaga-Me
Jaga-Me is a health technology company which aims to make healthcare more responsive, more affordable and more personal. It has developed a mobile app to help patients and their families engage home care services from qualified professionals within the community. These healthcare professionals are matched according to patients' requests based on skillset and availability.

Medarwin
Medarwin is looking to change the way the elderly and people with physical limitations dry their laundry, with its product - Raincheck. Through a smartphone app, Raincheck automatically deploys wet laundry outdoor and retracts them during inclement weather.

GIVE.asia also received an additional S$10,000 prize money granted by the Community Chest Sustainable Giving Award which complements Singtel Future Makers.

Community Chest Managing Director & Assistant CEO of National Council of Social Service, Ms Ng Ling Ling, said: 'Through Singtel Future Makers, we hope to involve the community in the generation and development of new ideas to enhance the whole giving experience to meet community needs, through technology and innovation. We also hope to better understand motivations and behaviours that encourage giving, particularly within the digital space.'

Mr Andrew Buay said: 'The partnership with Community Chest for this special award underscores the commitment of the Singtel Group to explore different ways to build inclusive communities through social and technological innovation. Together, we can reach out to a pool of established social entrepreneurs and enterprises to drive meaningful changes in the social service sector.'

The seven recipients were unveiled at the Singtel Future Makers Award Ceremony held at *SCAPE The Tree Top today, where they outlined their business ideas, strategies, implementations and road maps to interested investors, corporate and community partners.

For more information about the recipients, please refer to Annex A.

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About Singtel Future Makers
Singtel Future Makers is launched to help build and support an ecosystem of change agents, innovation, capacity building and collaboration that will help transform the lives of the needy and the vulnerable in the community, as well as support care givers and Voluntary Welfare Organisations. The programme was built on past year's success of community engagements, mentorship and funding support for social entrepreneurs across Singapore and Australia. The programme is open to passionate individuals and social ventures who believe that technological innovation plays a key role in making wide-scale social impact that will help shape future success for Singapore.

About Singtel's Corporate Social Responsibility
Singtel aims to create sustainable and long-term growth for its business, while leading and shaping positive changes for its marketplace and customers, the communities it operates in, its people and the environment. Singtel's community focus is on the well-being of people, enabling their inclusion into society and helping them realise their potential through its core competence in digital and infocomm technologies. The Group believes that it can make a difference to disadvantaged communities, especially the vulnerable children and youth, through corporate and workplace giving, staff volunteering and leveraging its skills and ICT innovations.

Singtel is a founding member of the Singapore Business Network on DisAbility - advancing equitable employment opportunities for people with disability through awareness, shared expertise, network and resources.

For more information, visit http://info.singtel.com/about-us/sustainability

About Singtel
Singtel is Asia's leading communications group providing next-generation communication, infotainment and technology services to consumers and businesses across Asia Pacific. The Group has a presence in Asia, Australia and Africa with over 600 million mobile customers in 23 countries. In Singapore, Singtel's consumer operations delivers a complete and integrated suite of services, including mobile, broadband and TV. Singtel provides a superior customer experience by continually setting new goals in service, quality and innovation.

For more information, visit www.singtel.com

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Annex A