New Business Launcher to Help Companies Take Off

May 8, 2000, Atlanta,GA - Atlanta entrepreneurs Palaniswamy "Raj" Rajan and Jay Chaudhry announced a new business launching service -- eLaunchpad, Inc. -- providing the environment, the expertise and funding to launch internet infrastructure companies. eLaunchpad with provide expertise in the critical business area of sales and marketing, product development and operations for a typical 30% equity stake in each new portfolio company.

"eLaunchpad is a business launcher," said Raj, co-founder, president and CEO of eLaunchpad. "We plan to speed up the fundamental operations of a company, whether it's in product development, funding, operations or business development, providing what the company needs to allow it to generate revenue quickly and reach profitability sooner."

By implementing customized "best practices" for ideas, products and technology to compress the stages of development, eLaunchpad plans to introduce companies into the market at a much quicker pace than a typical incubator. Companies accepted into the eLaunchpad center are on-course to generate revenue in one year and become profitable by the second year. Initially the company will focus on launching e-frastructure companies in the business-to-business, wireless and core technology companies. Companies with recurring revenue models and value added Application Service Providers will be considered.

"Our background is in building companies that produce results," said Jay Chaudhry, cofounder and chairman of eLaunchpad. "eLaunchpad provides us with an opportunity to work with early stage business propositions, then quickly accelerate the development to profitability by replicating our experiences."

Jay Chaudhry will serve as Co-founder and Chairman of eLaunchpad, providing experience in starting, developing and managing to profitable technology-focused companies. He is founder or co-founder of SecureIT, an enterprise security services company and now part of VeriSign, Air2Web, a wireless infrastructure developer and CoreHarbor, an e-procurement internet company. In addition, Chaudhry serves on the boards of numerous technology companies and is an angel investor. He is co-founder and current president of TiE Atlanta. Jay also co-founded the Atlanta CEO High Tech Council.

Prior to forming SecureIT, Chaudhry served as senior vice president of marketing and business development of IQ Software, a provider of data warehousing tools. At Unisys, he was Vice President of Worldwide Software Sales and Marketing. He held a variety of marketing and sales positions with NCR and IBM.

Chaudhry holds an MBA with marketing specialization, an MS in Computer Engineering, an MS in Engineering Management as well as a Bachelor's in Electronics Engineering from IT-BHU Varanasi in India.

Palaniswamy "Raj" Rajan is the co-founder of eLaunchpad and will serve as President and CEO. He also brings a history of starting successful companies to the venture. Raj is co-founder of VerticalOne, a content personalization service that is now a division of S1 Corporation, an internet financial services company. He founded and served as Chairman of ResourcIS -- a firm providing IT personnel to technology startups -- and Emerald Systems -- a technology consulting firm specializing in object oriented programming. Raj is the co-founder of the Atlanta CEO High Tech Council and TiE, The Indus Entrepreneurs, a national organization mentoring to entrepreneurs.

Raj holds a BS in Computer Engineering and an MS in Computer Science from Florida Institute of Technology.

About eLaunchpad
eLaunchpad implements best practices for ideas, products and technology to compress the stages of development and introduces companies into the market at a much quicker pace than traditional incubators. eLaunchpad focuses on e-frastructure companies in the business-to-business and wireless space and developers of Internet core technologies. Companies accepted into the eLaunchpad center are targeted to generate revenue in one year and become profitable by the second year. The company is located at 1050 Crown Pointe Parkway, Suite 1700, Atlanta, GA 30338 and on the web at elaunchpad.com.

For additional information , contact Stan Samples at 770.481.2107 or at ssamples@elaunchpad.com.