Mumbai based Aftek sets footprint in Middle- East Market.

Domestic Launch planned later this year.

Mumbai, April 26, 2006 - In a significant business development for Mumbai based Aftek, its associate, German Internet search specialist Seekport Internet Technologies GmbH and its Saudi Arabian partner MITSCO group, launched the internet search engine 'Sawafi' (the word means 'sandstorm'), specially designed to meet the challenges of the Arabic language. The joint venture, Seekport Internet Technologies Arabia FZ-LLC, will be based in Dubai. The contracts were signed at the GITEX IT trade show in Riyadh on April 23 in the presence of Seekport management and MITSCO officials.

'Sawafi is the first search engine optimized for the Arabic language, it shall be operational in the next couple of months' said Mr Hermann Havermann, Managing Director of the new Seekport Internet Technologies Arabia. 'The joint venture is a pioneer because it is the first internet search engine to take up the challenges of the Arabic language and culture. This would also be useful when we shall tap the Indian market towards the year end as we see a huge growth potential in India too, as it is also a multi lingual and multi cultural country,' he said.

Commenting on this occasion Mr.Ranjit Dhuru, Chairman and Managing Director, Aftek Ltd. Said that 'the acquisition of Arexera in Germany was a first step in a series of developments that witnessed Seekport emerging as a key player in the Aftek group. The willingness of our partners in the Middle - East investing US $ 6 million in this venture augers well in keeping with the game plan we have for Seekport in particular. This joint venture called MITSCO - Seekport is structured with each partner holding a 45 % stake each and the balance 10% amongst the operational staff in Dubai.' He added.

Aftek, through its wholly owned German based subsidiary Arexera has a 33% stake in Seekport, an emerging force to reckon with in the burgeoning search engine segment. Within the European continent, Seekport enjoys a significant and growing market share.

Seekport will provide the search technology. The search engine index will provide a complete range of Arabic language websites, in combination with English and French language contents from Arab countries. The search will be customized to cater the specific needs of the Arabic user while addressing the numerous peculiarities and dialect variations of the Arabic language.

'We have found an ideal partner in Seekport - they not only have innovative technology, but also profound understanding of the local conditions of the Arabic language and culture area', explains MITSCO which stands for Mobile Interactive Technology Solutions, a leading provider of innovative technology solutions based in Riyadh. 'Together, we will establish the leading Internet search engine, and a whole new experience to internet users in the Arab market'.

The Arabic Internet search market is currently one of the most dynamic and least exploited worldwide, with an estimated 24 million users in 2005 - and as many as 43 million users expected by 2008. The ten most popular websites in the Arabic region account for between 16 and 70 million page-impressions. Estimates put the total number of Arabic language websites at around 100 million at the present time, doubling every year - which is only a very small proportion of the total worldwide Internet content of more than 12 billion sites. One of the reasons for this is the very high requirements that the Arabic language makes for Internet search engines. Current search algorithms in the usual Internet search engines are hardly capable of observing even the simplest morphological conditions required to process Arabic-language contents in a meaningful way for users. That is why search engines have so far been under-used in Arabic.