NEW TECHNOLOGY

Cincinnati Enquirer • September 14, 2009
By Laura Baverman • lbaverman@enquirer.com 

Search engine provides more thorough, customized info
The goal of Zakta.com is to provide Internet users with exactly the information they need.

Two years after Sundar Kadayam dreamt up this new way to search the Internet, he's ready to make it public. Zakta gives Internet users the ability to customize, categorize and save their searches and then share them with friends or the public. It's a tool some industry experts think could throw current technology used by Google, Yahoo and Bing on its head.

But it's also one that faces big challenges. To become mainstream, millions of users must adopt entirely new search behaviors.

Kadayam is best known locally as a founder of Intelliseek, a Greater Cincinnati tech success story from the late 1990s dotcom era. He and partner Mahendra Vora sold the company to Nielsen in April 2007 after building it as an integral tool for marketing and advertising companies to measure the way consumers respond to brands on the Web.

Kadayam took some time off after the sale, though he never stopped thinking about what he'd do next. His passion for search started in the late '90s, but the dotcom crash forced his ideas to the backburner at that time.

"I noticed there was going to be this huge explosion of information online and it was going to outpace the availability of tools to make sense of it," he said. Today, 60 to 80 percent of searches are informational in nature, he said. That means they don't necessarily result in a direct answer. These searches require browsing, sifting, narrowing. And they often span over several hours, days or weeks.

"I find it extremely difficult," he said. "Why do I get the same list of results I got back in the 90s? Why are the results read only? Why can't I throw the garbage out, reorganize the useful stuff and save it that way?"

He's spent the last two years answering these questions with Zakta, which has offices in Blue Ash.

Sure, Zakta can act as a normal search engine - a person can type in 'dishwashers' and see what comes up. But by logging into Zakta, that person can categorize the search by dishwasher prices, reviews or repair without making a new search. Zakta then allows that person to delete results that weren't helpful and save ones that were. The person can email the useful results to family members, or even publish them on the Web for the public to see.

"It allows people to provide the benefit of their work to the next person coming to search," said Vora, who is backing the company financially and serves as the chairman of its board.

As an example, Kadayam refers to a search he recently completed on Michael Jordan. A fan of the basketball great, he saved all of his searches of Jordan's gravity-defying moves on one list, then published the links for all to see.

"You now have a nicely organized guide that gives you the best of Michael Jordan information," Kadayam said.

The implications of Zakta are great, said Jason Falls, an independent social media consultant who runs www.socialmediaexplorer.com out of Louisville.

For the first time, it integrates social networking and personalization with search results.

"The first time I saw it, I said 'Wow,' this makes search very different," Falls said. "It makes a hell of a lot of sense."

Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of Nielsen Online and a former Intelliseek executive, says Zakta is on the progressive edge.

"It's this notion of digital content curation: tagging, bookmarking, indexing and leveraging your peers to determine what's most relevant," he said.

Still, to become a universally recognized and used engine, Zakta has to find a way to draw massive numbers of users, said Falls. And that's no easy task.

"Any time you throw a tool out that requires people to change their behavior, it better be dynamite or it won't take hold," he said.

Starting this week, Kadayam will spread the word through industry analysts, blogs, social media and word-of-mouth.

He'll also need to make the company profitable and generate a return for his investors. He plans to sell limited advertising on the site and soon launch a premium membership opportunity. He and a group of investors have funded the company so far, but he'll also need angel or venture funding to build it bigger.

But Kadayam takes with him lessons learned from his experience with Intelliseek. He needed the right people on board, so he named Mark Reed, who he calls the most brilliant technologist in the Midwest, chief technology officer and recruited Vora to his board.

He knows he'll need to be flexible, letting the market teach him along the way.

Most important, though, is passion.

"He's one of the best search gurus in the region, and he's one of the most gentle, committed people," Vora said. "That passion drives you to perfection."