Their company, tenCube, is off to a promising start.
Incubated in an office on the Kent Ridge campus, tenCube develops software that tracks lost mobile phones and retrieves or deletes information such as contacts and photographs.
Last year, it notched up sales exceeding $400,000. It is now looking to tie up with mobile phone makers to offer the cellphone security feature to individual users.
All three, who have become permanent residents here, credit NUS for nurturing the entrepreneur in them.
Mr Cheung, 27, who came here at 13 to study at The Chinese High School under an Education Ministry scholarship, said his parents sent him to Singapore because 'it has one of the best education systems in the world and Singapore was close to home '.
He went on to Hwa Chong Junior College and the electrical and electronic engineering faculty at NUS.
His business ambitions were fired up during a one-year stint at NUS' overseas college in Silicon Valley, where he interned at the same company and shared a flat with Mr Chatterji.
Mr Chatterji, 27, admits he came to Singapore at the age of 19 because it was cheaper than the United States, but was pleasantly surprised by the first-rate facilities at the NUS School of Computing.
Mr Rishi, 26, who is married to another India-born student-turned-entrepreneur whom he met at NUS, said Singapore is a 'very liveable place' and a great place to start a tech business. From Lucknow, the same city as Mr Chatterji, Mr Rishi came to Singapore at 18.
Although his business may take him out of Singapore, he and his wife intend to set up a home here so that they can spend part of their lives here. 'Singapore will always be special to us,' he said.
Sandra Davie