Hakia has been available for over a year. So far,
however, the intelligent search engine, has been known among specialists
only.
“That’s part of our strategy. We wanted to get to analysts and market
observers first and make them aware of the fact that hakia exists. Time has come
for mass market”, Ilkka Almonkari responsible for hakia project in Prokom
said.
Within a month, it will be possibile to communicate with people who
asked the same question to the serach engine (contrary to Google, the user asks
questions to hakia).
“We estimated that this service will substantially
increase the number of hakia users. We will start building internet societies”,
Ilkka Almonkari stressed.
Hakia will offer further services this year.
The company generating income thanks to advertisements, is
supposed to get out of the red this year. The number of its users is estimated
at several dozens thousand daily. The majority of them live in the USA and
Europe. Despite its short story, hakia is included on the list of 100 biggest
alternative search engines in the world (there are 1,000 of them altogether).
Very rough estimates give hakia 0.8 percent of worldwide market worth USD 100
billion.
Hakia belongs to a group of international investors,
including funds and individuals. Prokom controls over 4 percent of the capital.
“In the middle of September, the supervisory board and the most important
shareholders are meeting to discuss the company’s future”, Wieslaw Walendziak,
Prokom Investment deputy CEO responsible for hakia said.
There are plans to
list hakia on the Nasdaq in 2008. Shareholders will also consider selling the
company to investors of other search engines.
“It’s more probable, however,
that the shareholders choose individual development of the company. The capital
could be raised then. It would be a minor increase of several millions dollars
per each shareholder”, Wieslaw Walendziak added.
One of Prokom’s plans
consists in building one of the main data centers in Wroclaw in cooperation with
one of Prokom’s companies.
Hakia serach engine to get out of the red this year
Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The search engine co-owned by Prokom IT group, starts services for mass clients. In September, its shareholders will decide, what next.