Chegg Co-Founder Osman Rashid Working On A New E-Reader Startup, Raises $1.1 Million

Many of you know Chegg as being one of the first online textbook rental companies.  Jim Safka, former CEO of Ask.com became the CEO of Chegg in early June.  With Safka now on board, that freed up some time for Chegg co-founder Osman Rashid to focus on other ventures.

Specifically, Rashid is trying out a new venture called Kakai.  Kakai has even raised $1.1 million according to an SEC filing.  Kakai is currently in stealth mode, but they describe themselves as a brand for “portable electronic devices for receiving, displaying, reading and playing electronically published materials,” according to paidContent.

Rashid remains as Chegg’s Chairman and Kakai may actually be linked to Chegg.  Considering that Chegg is textbook rental and Kakai is possibly developing an e-book reader, there may be a way to connect the two that we don’t know about yet.

One of Chegg and Kakai’s angel investors is Eric Di Benedetto.  Another Kakai co-founder is Babur Habib, a previous manager at consulting firm Exponent.  Habib has about 8 years of experience in electronics technology which will be instrumental for the development of an e-reader.