news of bangladeshi entrepreneur
DESCRIPTION
News that empower and motivate Bangladeshi entrepreneur and investor in everyway.TRANSCRIPT
By SDASIA
News of Bangladeshi Entrepreneur
Six Bangladeshi Entrepreneurs Get Funding by Shuvo on July 12, 2015
Yesterday in Dhaka, at the 92nd Social Business Design Lab, six new
local businesses won approval from Yunus Center for investment.
Nobel prize winner Prof Dr. Muhammad Yunus presided over the
presentation ceremony. Initially–there were 150 participants, who
were observed by national and international organization. The young
entrepreneurs presented their business plans, which included:
marketing and sustainability plans. All six businesses were approved for funding from various social business funds.
Since its inception in January 2013, Social Business Design Lab have
approved 1,235 projects. Most of these approved businesses were already in operation.
“It is exciting that so many ideas are now a reality and impressive that entrepreneurs coming from remote
areas are now presenting their business plans and defending them in front of distinguished international audience,” said Dr. Yunus.
This year, the Social Business Design Lab has approved these
projects: Borsha Handicraft, run by Bithi Begum, which makes
women’s clothes and decoration products. Bibiyana Beauty Parlour,
run by Sharifa Khatum, which provides skincare services. Sohani
Fashion Tailors, run by Sohani Akter Jhumur; which produces ladies
clothing. Rojoni Gondha Layer Farm, run by Riazul Islam, which
produces meat and dairy products. Mahim enterprise, run by Md.
Kamruzzaman, which sells grocery items. Rajib Bansh House also
got approved and it’s run by Rajib Bansh.
Professor Yunus also invited the winners to join the Social Busing
Lab, which will be held on 29th August 2015. Dr. Yunus believes that
Bangladesh is a great platform for entrepreneurs, and wants to encourage them.
------------------------------------
Low Cost Loans For Bangladeshi Startups by Shuvo on July 25, 2015 Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services
(BASIS) and IDLC Finance Limited signed a mutual agreement on
Thursday to sanction low-cost loans for software, BPO, and e-
commerce startups. This new agreement also includes low-cost loan
opportunities for SMEs and women entrepreneurs. IDLC also wants
to expand the Bangladeshi information and technology sector through
raising funds via global promotions.
------------------------------------
This Guy Quit His Job To Start A
Bangladeshi Startup by SD Asia Desk on July 9, 2015
After working for about ten years in the telco industry, Nazmul Sheik,
co-founder of Shajgoj, was eager for a fresh challenge. At the time he
was stationed in Nigeria as a consultant with MTN, Africa’s largest
telecommunications provider, and earned a decent salary. Despite a
fairly luxurious lifestyle and strong career growth prospects, Sheik felt
his job was boring and mundane. His home country of Bangladesh
was experiencing a spurt of economic growth and Sheik was
convinced there were opportunities waiting for him. He soon quit his job to move back home.
The first hurdle Sheik encountered was the resistance of his parents.
They were convinced he had made an ill-advised decision to resign
from a lucrative job and start his own venture. Undeterred by their
pleas to reconsider, Sheik quickly started to identify opportunities in Bangladesh’s growing tech startup ecosystem.
Finding free space
Despite his relatively early entry, Sheik noticed there was existing
competition and barriers to entry in almost every tech sector he
examined in Bangladesh. This was a surprise. Part of his decision to
move back was to enter a market, which no other entrepreneur had
looked at seriously. It was at this point he “stumbled” across the
beauty and lifestyle space and foresaw considerable potential in the
area. In May 2013, Sheik launched Shajgoj, with the promise to cater
to growing demand for beauty tips and advice, with the vision of
evolving it into an ecommerce store for all Bengali-speaking women
across the world. “Nothing had been done previously in this sector
and I wanted an early start,” Sheik tells Tech in Asia.
Shajgoj started gaining traction almost immediately after launch,
validating Sheik’s concept. To keep his audience engaged, Sheik
employed a number of freelance content writers who constantly
updated the site with make-up, skincare, and beauty tips. He was
also able to convince his friend, Milky Mahmud, to quit his job at Ericsson and come on board as a technical co-founder.
Today the portal boasts 2.5 million monthly page views with about
50,000 daily unique visitors. Sheik proudly claims his Face book page
has over 650,000 organic followers and his community is one of the
most active and engaged ones in the country. Visitors to the portal
are not just from Bangladesh, but also from the US, India, the UK,
and other Western countries. Sheik believes there is room for even
further growth, citing the fact that there are 250 million Bengali speakers worldwide.
Online retail leap
While Shajgoj is only able to monetize through advertisements and
sponsored content right now, Sheik has ambitious plans for the future
of his venture. He is in the final stages of opening an affiliated
ecommerce store and believes the new endeavor will be
tremendously successful due to the trust that Shajgoj has inculcated
in their community. “Millions of people rely on us for beauty tips and advice, and they will prefer to buy from us as well,” says Sheik.
Currently, most imported beauty products in the Bangladeshi market
are dodgy replicas of popular international brands, reveals Sheik.
People are duped into buying counterfeit lipsticks and mascaras,
which could prove to be dangerous items – and the fakes hurt those
who try to run legitimate businesses. That’s why the content Shajgoj
is creating is focused on educating Bangladeshi women about
popular and trending international products. Now these items are in high demand, a need that Shajgoj wants to cater to.
While the startup remains bootstrapped, Sheik says he is in
advanced negotiations with investors to finance the next stage of
growth. The entrepreneur also has regional ambitions and wants to
expand the focus of his portal to markets in India, Sri Lanka, and other countries with a large Bangladeshi Diaspora.
------------------------------------ 2 Bangladeshi Startups Bag $15K Investment From Fenox by Aumia Haq on June 14, 2015 Silicon Valley based venture capitalist firm, Fenox has made an
investment of $15000 each to two Bangladeshi startups –
SmartKompare and HandyMama.co – at the event ‘Pitch Night’ held
for the startup graduates of Founder Institute. 5 graduates
of Founder Institute pitched their ideas to investors at the event.
SmartKompare SmartKompare helps you to find your best financial product from sea
of options. It compares loans from different banks and financial
institutions and helps users make a good decision. Currently, this
service is analyzes personal loans, but soon this will also be available
for all types of loans.
HandyMama.co This startup provides users with a variety of services – house and
toilet cleaning, laundry, dish washing, electrical work, repairs and so
on. All you have to do is give them a call or send a request through
their website and your house will be spotless and sparkling! Currently
they are providing this service in Mohammadpur and Dhanmondi
area in Dhaka.
The remaining three startups that participated at Pitch Night were
AKM Masuduzzam’s TapStar Interactive, Abu Sayeed’s Tutor 71 and
Khobaib Chowdhury’s StyLine.
The chief guest in the award giving ceremony was Shameem Ahsan,
President of BASIS, Director of FBCCI and general partner Fenox
Venture Capital. Also present were Kyle Kling, Vice President Fenox
Development Department, Sajid Rahman , Director of Founder
Institute Dhaka Chapter and Co-Director Minhaz Anwar who is also a
mentor, judge and investor.
“It is a great day for our startup eco system. We are
taking companies from idea stage to launch to getting
traction and even getting their first outside
funding” Sajid Rahman , Director of Founder Institute
Dhaka Chapter. “A virtuous cycle has been
established”.
Founder Institute is the world’s largest entrepreneur training and
startup launch program, helping aspiring founders across the globe
build enduring technology companies. It will have its next batch starting in October and enrollment will start from this month.
Bangladeshi Startup SureCash gets US
7Million Funding by Mustafizur Rahman Khan on April 21, 2015 Dhaka, Bangladesh – The Osiris Group, an Asian frontier market
investment firm, made a USD 7 million Series B fintech investment in
SureCash Pte Ltd, a mobile banking and payment operator in
Bangladesh. Earlier, SureCash received Series A investment from a
group of Japanese investors specializing in the e-commerce industry.
Founded in 2010 by Dr. Shahadat Khan, SureCash operates the most
advanced mobile banking and payment platform in the industry, and
allows anyone with a mobile phone to deposit cash, send money,
make purchases, and pay bills. While most mobile financial service
(MFS) deployments globally are single -bank models with limited
scalability, SureCash’s cutting-edge technology and superior
architecture allows it to integrate multiple banks into its platform,
enabling the consumer a rich and flexible experience for all payment
categories including retail payments, utility bills, school tuitions, salary
disbursements, and many more.
Jason Bajaj, Co-Founder and Managing Director of The Osiris Group,
said, “ Simply put, SureCash is a game changer. Led by a highly
technical CEO and seasoned management team, the company has
created a mobile banking and payment platform unlike anything else
today. We have thoroughly researched Bangladesh MFS market and
are convinced that its size supports 2-3 dominant players. We are
further convinced that with its engineering excellence, innovation
capabilities, and ability to deploy custom services, SureCash will truly
transform lives and rapidly ascend to a dominant market position.”
Dr. Shahadat Khan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of
SureCash commented, “SureCash is a growing network operating
with 30,000 retail agents in partnership with 5 scheduled banks and
more than 50 payment affiliates including public utilities,
municipalities, merchants and education institutions in Bangladesh.
We are pleased to have Osiris as one of our partners. They not only
bring capital but also deep experience in the emerging payment
space. Together, we are building a payment business model to serve
the people of this nation, and are eager to work closely with all
stakeholders, including the telcos, financial institutions, regulators,
central bank and our customers.”
On the importance of foreign direct investment (FDI), Bajaj added,
“Over the past five years, the Government of Bangladesh has
achieved wonderful milestones around social progress and security
stability. Solid fiscal and monetary policy, strengthening foreign
reserves and other macro tailwinds allow stronger conviction
allocating risk capital to transparent private sector entrepreneurs.
Bangladesh Bank Governor, Dr. Atiur Rahman, has boldly engineered
an inclusive MFS ecosystem, which has become the benchmark for
financial inclusion for many emerging countries today. We are
thankful to the Government of Bangladesh and look forward to
investing in additional opportunities for improving governance, skill-
set transfer, and job creation for her 160 million resilient citizens.”
For more information about Surecash, visit www.surecash.net
------------------------------------
NRB sees great prospects for Bangladeshi Developers by Mustafizur Rahman Khan
In 2030, Bangladesh is projected to have 185 million people inside a
country the size of New York State. The country will be the most
densely populated country on the planet. At the same time, GDP per
capita in Bangladesh is currently less than $1,000 per year, making it
one of the poorest countries in the world. A skilled labor force of full
stack software developers can provide a critical revenue and
investment source to the Bangladeshi government through tax
payments domestically and remittances from abroad.
As a poor, densely populated country, Bangladesh’s future relies on a
government that is making sustained infrastructure, education, and
health investments. Bangladesh currently imports more than it
exports, so the country’s balance of trade is negative. To this end,
the country relies on foreign remittances and foreign direct
investment as two critical elements to balance its current account. As
the country develops, foreign donors (such as USAID, DFID, ADB)
will shift development money to higher priority countries. In the
future, the Bangladeshi government will need to be in a position to
rely on its citizens’ tax payments, greater remittances, and foreign
direct investment that expects market-based returns in the future.
Skilled labour, where the cost of training is repaid quickly, offers a
unique solution for the Bangladeshi government.
According to Evans Data Corp, there are 26.4 million software
programmers worldwide. As of 2013, the US leads the world in
software development with 3.6 million developers, followed by India
with around 2.75 million. However, the landscape of software
development is changing rapidly. By 2018, India will have 5.2 million
developers vs. 4.5 million in the US. Given the realities of poor,
crowded countries, India is a better case study than the US for mid to
long-term policy in Bangladesh.
The software development environment that led to India’s rapid
growth as an outsourcing center in the 1990’s and 2000s changed
dramatically in the last decade. Fifteen years ago, Microsoft
technologies and other IP protected software platforms combined
with high installed server costs and significant required investment in
training labor, to create competitive dynamics that favored the growth
of large BPO companies. Today, most VC backed web companies
prefer open source programming platforms such as Ruby, Python,
Nodejs and so on. High installed server costs have been replaced by
on demand elastic computing, scalable servers such as AWS and
Rackspace. A masters in computer science has been replaced by
dozens of free or cheap (<$2,000) online training programs. All three
trends lead to a lower cost of training and higher return on investment
for a Bangladeshi who takes the time to learn programming. As US
based entrepreneur Martin Smith writes in the Atlantic Magazine:
“The price of content will freefall over the next seven years. We heard
the first rumblings last year when the Supreme Court ruled that U.S.
copyright owners may not stop imports and re-selling of copyrighted
content legally sold abroad, paving the way for a global market for
textbooks.”
Further:
“The supply of learning content will swell. This might sound
counterintuitive, but as we move toward a global market for content,
creators will be price takers, unable to command much negotiating
power given the sheer scale of distribution platforms (think iTunes).
While it may make less sense for a professor in New York City to
write a book, it makes a whole lot of sense for one in Mumbai.”
While Smith is right that the cost of content has come down, good
training programs in relevant programming languages used by high
growth companies still cost money. Let’s assume that through
existing online platforms (MIT Open Courseware, Code Academy,
Coursera, Udemy, Udacity) a dedicated Bangladeshi high school or
college grad could learn enough programming in six months (12 hour
days, 5 days a week) to be marketable to western firms at $12 / hour,
conservatively. Let’s further assume the cost of renting a computer
for six months plus the cost of training is $2,000 total of investment by
either the citizen or the government. Were the Bangladeshi
government to offer a $2,000 stipend on a debit card for approved
courses, the payback period, assuming that the government takes
10% of wages for 2 years following the initial six-month investment,
would be ten months. The return on investment of the initial $2,000
over two years, assuming employment for two years would be greater
than 80%. Beyond the initial return, the government would have a
highly employable citizen, likely to pay taxes, making 20x the current
per capita GDP.
Key elements of such a program to position it for success:
• Only support programming languages known to be used by
high growth start ups (Python, Rails, Angular.JS, Node.JS, iOS,
Android)
• Do not offer cash payments for the investment. Offer debit
cards that work with a set list of providers (Udacity, Udemy, etc)
• Potentially create partnership with these course providers to
monitor performance algorithmically and kick off students that
aren’t working hard enough over six month period
• Bulk purchases of latest hardware to get steep discounts from
Apple and telecom companies, then rent these to students as
part of the program
• Mentorship from existing Bangladeshi programmers around the
world
• Online network for all participating in the program to share
resources and insights.
In conclusion, Bangladesh has a unique opportunity, given its
trapped, hard working labour force to be a back office for the silicon
valleys, alleys, and roundabouts of the world. Proper government
support and investment will ensure that Bangladesh’s future citizenry
are skilled labourers, reaping dividends for the government through
tax payments at home or remittances from abroad.
I am NHM Tanveer Hossain Khan, proud owner of long name and
CTO of Source4Style / Le Souk (http://www.source4style.com) in New
York. We are the marketplace for premium fabrics online with end to
end drop shipment. I take challenging work as “Fun” and love doing it
rigorously. I have development team in Dhaka and we are working on
Ruby on Rails stack.