Cari Internet Sdn. Bhd. is a Malaysian company founded in 1996. It operates the eponymous website Cari.com.my, the country's first

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

and

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

, along with online florist Flowers.com.my and

web hosting service A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...

Onnet. Cari Forum, a multilingual

internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

, is a particularly popular portion of its website, and has been reported to be Malaysia's largest internet forum. The word ''cari'' (

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

: //) means "search" in the

Malay language Malay (; ms, Bahasa Melayu, links=no, Jawi alphabet, Jawi: , Rejang script, Rencong: ) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and that is also spo ...

Business development

Cari was founded by Liew Chew-Keat (). It was unique for its early provision of trilingual services: English,

Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...

, and Chinese. After its founding, Cari grew to become one of the country's top ten web portals, while maintaining tight control over costs. It received RM2.5 million (US$657,808) in

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

funding from AKN.com in 2000 in exchange for a 15% stake, which was later transferred to Swansoft Technologies. The bursting of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

actually aided Cari's cash flow, allowing it to cut advertising spending from RM450,000 in 2000, to just RM50,000 in 2001. However, it was still not profitable in 2001. In 2003, Cari Internet announced the rollout of its in-house developed

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

platform, which partnered with local

payment system A payment system is any system used to settle financial transactions through the transfer of monetary value. This includes the institutions, instruments, people, rules, procedures, standards, and technologies that make its exchange possible.Biago ...

Commerce Payment Sdn. Bhd. In 2008, it announced a partnership with local restaurant search startup FoodStreet, founded by local technologist and

foodie A foodie is a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food, and who eats food not only out of hunger but also as a hobby. The related terms "gastronome" and "gourmet" define roughly the same thing, i.e. a person who enjoys food for pleas ...

Aidan Lee Aidan or Aiden is a modern version of a number of Celtic language names, including the Irish male given name ''Aodhán'', the Scottish Gaelic given name Aodhan and the Welsh name Aeddan. Phonetic variants, such as spelled with an "e" instead o ...

Legal disputes

In 2000, Cari Internet had a legal dispute with Catcha.com and considered suing the latter for copyright infringement. In 2008, Cari Internet was taken to court over postings made in its forum which allegedly defamed a manager of the

Malaysian Chinese Malaysian Chinese (; Malay: ''Orang Cina Malaysia''), alternatively Chinese Malaysians, are Malaysian citizens of Han Chinese descent. They form the second largest ethnic group after the Malay majority constituting 22.4% of the Malaysian po ...

newspaper ''

Kwong Wah Yit Poh ''Kwong Wah Yit Poh'' or ''Kwong Wah Daily'' () is a Malaysian Chinese daily that was founded on 20 December 1910 by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The idea of publishing the ''Kwang Hwa Pao'' or 'Glorious Chinese Newspaper' was originally conceived when Dr ...

''. Cari had refused to answer three letters from the manager alleging defamation and demanding that Cari disclose the identities of the posters who made the comments. The High Court at George Town ordered Cari to disclose the requested information and pay court costs for the complainant.

Traffic and rankings

According to

Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. was an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. ...

's rankings, cari.com.my was the 144th-most popular website among Malaysia's 74.6% visitors in March 2018.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official websiteOfficial online florist websiteOfficial Onnet web hosting website
Online companies of Malaysia Telecommunications companies established in 1996 1996 establishments in Malaysia Privately held companies of Malaysia