NABIL Feisal Barnadhaj and Wan Kasim Wan Kadir exude the kind of spirit that many young technopreneurs are made of: smart and always up to the challenge.

NABIL Feisal Barnadhaj and Wan Kasim Wan Kadir exude the kind of spirit that many young technopreneurs are made of: smart and always up to the challenge.

The 25-year-olds are founders of Gokita.com, a contextual online advertising network that allows individuals and companies alike to spread the word on their business, products and services.

Prior to that, Nabil, at 18, had already developed Internet security solutions for a number of business clients while Wan Kadir had success selling custom-made T-shirts to clients in Europe over eBay.

The two met in 2004 when they enrolled at Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia to study political science.

Propelled by a common interest in IT, they launched the search engine Cara Search in 2005.

“The idea to come up with a site for online advertising for the Asian market was already there, but at that time we lacked resources to pull it off,” Nabil recalled.

“Time, or rather lack of it, was another obstacle.”

Having graduated and established a small office-home office entity called Cara.com.my Media, Nabil and Wan Kadir were able to concentrate on launching Gokita.com. From merely offering a search engine, Cara’s Internet venture changed direction to offer an online advertising facility to Asian advertisers to reach the Asian market.

Wan Kadir pointed out that real-time processing is

important in online business, and Gokita.com promises to monitor and respond within three hours of advertisers’ requests to put up ads.

With Wan Kadir and Nabil devoting full-time into their newly launched outfit, such speedy interactivity is now possible. Cara also has another full-time staff who handles advertisers’ and publishers’ requests and monitors the network.

With Asians making up the bulk of Internet citizens, it is only natural for the technopreneurs to provide a Web site that can make Asian customers feel more connected.

To put it simply, Nabil likens the outfit to Google’s AdSense service – “only tailored for the Asian market and more affordable”.

He explained, “We target the regional market because it lets advertisers narrow down the market and take advantage of our cheaper offering. Only Gokita.com offers advertisers a chance to start placing ads with as little as US$10 (RM34).”

Meanwhile, Web publishers can enrol their site to display relevant text ads and get 50 per cent of the revenue.

The duo plan to secure partners in other countries to expand their reach. Apart from Malaysia, Gokita.com is already servicing clients in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, China, Japan and Australia.

“We also plan to approach partners who already have a brick-and-mortar presence so that through them we can reach advertisers who have not ventured into Internet marketing but want to get online,” Nabil said.

Nabil and Wan Kadir are constantly combing the Internet to look for more opportunities to do business online.

Nabil said through Gokita.com the both of them plan

to bring Internet business

opportunities to all Malaysians and reach even those who are not IT savvy.