Mergim Cahani

Founder and Chief Executive Officer · Gjirafa, Inc.

Internet Platforms / Search, E-Commerce and Digital MediaPristina, Kosovo

Mergim Cahani is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gjirafa, the Albanian-language internet company he began developing in 2011 while a graduate student in New York. Starting from the first Albanian-language search engine, Gjirafa has grown into a group spanning e-commerce, video streaming, business directories, media technology and television production, built around a market of roughly 12 million Albanian speakers that the major global platforms had largely ignored. A former refugee from Kosovo, Cahani worked at Broadridge Financial Solutions and through an executive management consulting programme at Morgan Stanley before founding the company.

Last reviewed: Sep 18, 2026

Mergim Cahani

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Gjirafa, Inc.

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Mergim Cahani is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gjirafa, the company that built the internet economy of the Albanian-speaking Balkans more or less from nothing. The opportunity he identified was structural rather than clever: roughly 12 million people speak Albanian across Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia and the diaspora, and the global platforms had never found it commercially worthwhile to serve them properly – no good search in the language, no e-commerce, no video, no digitised business directory. Cahani, a former refugee from Kosovo who was studying for a Master’s degree in New York at the time, started in 2011 by building the first Albanian-language search engine. Gjirafa has since grown into a group spanning search, e-commerce, video streaming, news, business listings, media technology and television production, going from seven employees to around two hundred, backed by Rockaway Capital and a set of well-known angel investors.

Career Highlights

  • Founded Gjirafa in 2011 with co-founders Ercan Canhasi and Diogjen Elshani.
  • Launched gjirafa.com, the first search engine built for the Albanian language.
  • Expanded the company into e-commerce, video streaming, news, weather, transport information and electronics retail.
  • Launched Gjirafa.biz, digitising more than 80,000 business profiles, and Gjirafa.50, described as the region’s first online store.
  • Grew the company from seven employees to roughly 200.
  • Joined the StartupYard accelerator in 2014.
  • Raised $2 million from Rockaway Capital in 2016, after angel investment from Esther Dyson, Ondrej Bartos and Philip Staehelin, and later a $6.7 million Series B led by Rockaway Capital with American investors.
  • Founded Gjirafa Studio, producing television content in partnership with the Kosovo Cinematographic Center.
  • Worked at Broadridge Financial Solutions and through an executive management consulting programme at Morgan Stanley before founding the company.

Professional Journey

Cahani left Kosovo as a refugee and built his early career in the United States. He worked at Broadridge Financial Solutions, the financial technology and investor communications firm, and took part in an executive management consulting programme at Morgan Stanley – experience in large, process-heavy financial institutions rather than in consumer internet.

The pivot came during graduate study in New York. Working with Professor Torsten Suel, a specialist in web search and information retrieval, he built a search engine project for the New Zealand web. Doing so made the economics of the problem obvious: a functioning search engine for a small national web is technically achievable by a small team, and the reason one did not exist for Albanian was market size rather than difficulty. Albanian is spoken by around 12 million people, which is more than enough to sustain an internet economy but too few for Google, Amazon or their equivalents to build for specifically.

He began developing Gjirafa in 2011, from a university dormitory, and launched gjirafa.com as the first Albanian-language search engine, joined by co-founders Ercan Canhasi and Diogjen Elshani. The strategy that followed was vertical integration by necessity: a search engine is only useful if there is something to find, so Gjirafa built the missing layers itself. Bus timetables, weather, news aggregation, a digitised directory of more than 80,000 businesses through Gjirafa.biz, electronics retail, and Gjirafa.50, described as the region’s first genuine online store. Video streaming followed, then media technology sold as a service, then Gjirafa Studio, producing television content in collaboration with the Kosovo Cinematographic Center.

The company’s funding history tracks that expansion. It joined the StartupYard accelerator in 2014 and took angel investment from a notable group including Esther Dyson, Credo Ventures partner Ondrej Bartos and Roland Berger managing partner Philip Staehelin. Rockaway Capital, the Czech investment group, put in $2 million in 2016 and subsequently led a $6.7 million Series B alongside American investors. Reported cumulative totals differ between sources and are not stated here.

Gjirafa has been described in regional press as the fastest-growing company in the Western Balkans and as the Balkans’ Amazon – comparisons that overstate the scale but capture the position, which is that of the default commercial internet infrastructure for a language group that previously had none. Cahani remains its chief executive.

Education

New York University

Master’s degree, Computer Science; worked with Professor Torsten Suel on a search engine project for the New Zealand web