Taking On Google in Egypt

http://photos.state.gov/libraries/america/441486/2011_Week_1/05042011_KngineEgypt_300.jpg

Ashraf ElFadeel (left) and Haytham ElFadeel (right) meet their major investor, Ahmed Alfi, in Giza.

“Technology is in my DNA, Code Optimizer is my name, research and innovation is my work.” That’s how Haytham ElFadeel introduces himself on Facebook. And you can believe him. Before the future Egyptian entrepreneur was 10 years old, he had devoured stacks of computer magazines and had taught himself computer programming.

“I simply fell in love with these machines,” he said.

While studying economics at the Higher Institute of Management and Commerce in Damietta, he taught himself computer science at home. When he graduated, he got a job as a software engineer at a large Egyptian company and later at large multinational firm.

ElFadeel was so fast at finishing his work at the first company that he had plenty of time left to work on what he was really interested in — the Semantic Web, a “web of data” that describes things and relationships among them on the World Wide Web in a way that computers can understand and that enables getting more meaningful and accurate search results.

“I would borrow equipment from my office and work more on semantic searches at home,” ElFadeel said. “This was so far from what the company was doing that nobody minded.”

In 2008, he started working on a semantic search engine that collects data from different sources and gives answers to direct questions and queries. For example, such an engine can tie together different types of information — blogs, photos, audio interviews — from different sources on a movie star or historic event and present it in a user-friendly way.

Two years ago, when the work started bringing results, ElFadeel invited his brother Ashraf to join him. Ashraf has a background in software development and network infrastructure. They named their venture Kngine, meaning “knowledge engine,” and headquartered it in Giza, the home of the pyramids.

 

A popular U.S. technology blog, TechCrunch, views Kngine as “a direct assault on Google.” But the ElFadeel brothers — while not shy about their ambitions — see themselves more in the context of Egypt and its history. Kngine is “a new Library of Alexandria,” they declared on the company’s website. The Library of Alexandria was a vast collection considered by historians the largest and most significant library of the ancient world.

“If we succeed, our engine will be actually better and more useful than the Library of Alexandria because Kngine’s users will get answers quickly and won’t need to peek into many volumes or pore through numerous pages,” Haytham said.

Haytham said he and Ashraf like working on something that matters to them personally and to the future of humanity.

“We feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, we are willing to try as hard as we can, and nothing can stand in our way,” they write in their blog.

And try hard they did, working 12 hours a day with meager funding. The Nile valley is not Silicon Valley, at least not yet, and venture capital is scarce. It took them a year to secure adequate capital from a private investor. Recently they won a cash prize in a business plan competition sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Haytham said he and Ashraf are part of a new generation of technology entrepreneurs that has emerged in Egypt in the past few years. They would like Kngine to become “a platform for innovation because it would inspire more people.” But whether it actually becomes one or not, “I would still love these machines,” Haytham said.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/iipdigital-en/index.html)