CAIRO: A select group of Egypt’s technology start-ups will kick-off a US road show on June 19 to present their innovative ideas to potential investors in New York, San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
The trip, backed by Egyptian venture capital firm Sawari Ventures, aims to help four Egyptian start-ups build connections with the world’s most cutting-edge tech companies and venture capitalists in the US.
“These companies are world class,” Ahmed El Alfi, chairman of Sawari Ventures, told Daily News Egypt. “I’m taking them to the US because they are as good, or better, than anything in the US.”
For many of the entrepreneurs, the trip represents an opportunity to establish relationships to secure financing necessary to scale their already proven and successful ideas to global levels. In addition, many of the companies hope to learn about the US’ biggest tech firms and build partnerships with them.
Haytham El Fadeel, founder of Kngine, a “revolutionary semantic-search and question and answer engine that provides customized, meaningful search results and answers to users’ question,” plans to use the trip to network with companies like Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Google, and get a feel for “how they work.”
“I hope to meet people who can help with product and technology design, in addition to the venture capitalists, in order for us to enter into our second round of funding,” Fadeel explained to DNE.
He’s also “very confident” that Kngine will be able to secure further financing.
According to El Fadeel, a “self-taught computer science researcher,” Kngine (pronounced KEN-JIN) differs from traditional search engines like Google, which crawls the web and indexes key words found in web pages. Kngine, he explained, uses a unique algorithm to understand the meaning of sentences, allowing Kngine to understand specifically what a user is looking for, and present to them the desired answers.
“We are trying to make the engine think like a human,” so when you use Kngine, it will present results as “knowledge in the way a human would while talking to you.”
The four-company delegation to the US will also include Amr Ramadan, founder of vimov (short for visionary movement), a mobile device software development company known for the iSimulator and Weather HD applications. Ramadan is optimistic that the trip will enable him to build the needed relationships between vimov and US companies.
“Our main issue has been establishing connections with media and tech companies to partner with. We want to learn how to market ourselves globally, and how to scale a small Egyptian company to be able to have a global impact. I’m hopeful that it will go well,” he said.
While there is undoubtedly much room for vimov to grow, its iSimulator has already been taken up by iPhone and iPad application developers across the world, and is seen as a key tool for simplifying the app development process.
In addition, its Weather HD app is the most popular weather application in over 50 countries, and one of the top selling apps in the US.
Another trip participant, Stanford PhD graduate Hossam Fahmy, the chief technology officer of SilMinds, intends mainly to secure additional funding for his company through this upcoming trip to the US.
“We want to present our work to the venture capitalists there, and we intend to go into our second round of financing,” Fahmy told DNE, adding that he “also wants to meet with some customers and partners.”
The CTO of SilMinds, which is a hardware accelerator company for financial transaction, expressed optimism at gaining further funding, citing SilMind’s proven track record of success.
“I’m very optimistic. We have research published, we have [five] patents in the US, and we are only one of two companies worldwide doing this. Plus, our work has been proven: it speeds up [financial] calculations significantly.”
According to Fahmy, Silminds’ hardware technology is able to significantly expedite the speed of financial calculations performed by companies, citing as example an Egyptian telecom client that was able to calculate and process its customer billing information six times faster with Silminds, saving the company time, energy and costs.
For his part, Ziad Aly, founder of Alzwad Mobile Services (ZMS), an “infotainment and communications platform” provider that “enables content and mobile application developers to reach feature-phone users across the Middle East,” wants to demonstrate Egypt’s deep potential and advanced talent capabilities to the US market.
“Every time [ZMS] has gone out to showcase itself, we’ve [had no problem] getting serious investors. With this trip, I am excited to help support these younger entrepreneurs. I want to show US companies that regardless of this past revolution, Egypt is a big country, and it’s got big talent.”
ZMS, whose flagship products include Me, a “multimedia and gaming platform,” and Gazar, a “geo-based service platform that allows users to order food [and] review movies and TV programs,” has already acquired over 500,000 subscribers with its Me platform, and is positioning itself “to become the number one mobile platform developer in the Middle East and North Africa.”
The four Egyptian start-ups have meetings scheduled with companies in New York from June 21 to 24 and in San Francisco/Silicon Valley from June 27 to July 1, and are being supported by Sawari Ventures I.
According to a company statement, Sawari Ventures I is an “early/growth-state venture capital fund investing in small businesses in Cairo, Alexandria and other technology hubs across the MENA region, [and] invest in entrepreneurs and companies who have the potential to transform the regional, and in some cases, the global landscape.”
