Kngine Raises $1 M from Bridging Gap Between Silicon Valley and Middle East

Semantic question-and-answer search engine developer Kngine, raised a total of $1 million last year from Venture Capitalists in Cairo and Mountain View, California.

With luck and great persistence, the brothers from Cairo who started the Kngine got financial backing by winning a startup competition with local Sawari Ventures worth $275,000. The Cairo VC added $150,000 to Kngine's fundings. Vodafone Ventures Egypt also gave the company more financial aid.

Sawari encouraged the owners to head to US to raise more money. Heeding Sawari's advice, Arab Crunch reports that the search engine developer found an opportunity with Samsung Open Innovation Center in Mountain View, California. Samsung , however, has not disclosed how much it invested.

According to Forbes, Kngine owner Haytham ElFadeel has always been fascinated with artificial intelligence ever since he was young. After graduating from Management and Computer in Cairo, he thought about developing a semantic search engine. Along with his brother Ashraf, they started coming up with concepts for their search engine.It was an almost impossible endeavour with a lot of factors hindering them from achieving their goals. But this did not stop the brothers from coding their startup idea. With great perseverance, they got the funding they need half way across the world in California.

There are a lot of promising startup companies like Kngine in the Middle East that are also having a hard time looking for funding from local VCs. Most have to go across the world to Silicon Valley to get the money they need.

Aramex and Wamda Capital executive chairman Fadi Ghandour said, "The ecosystem needs lots of work. That world is already happening, but I think it needs 10 years to show serious signs of thriving."

Kngine is now based in Palo Alto, and according to Wamda, ElFadeel is planning for a second round of fund raising to hit the $3 million mark by next year.

Kngine's success in raising the fund they need by having to go back and forth from Cairo to California is bridging the gap for potential Middle Eastern startup companies.