1. Please tell us about yourself.

– I went to Notre Dame and North South University. I grew up in Puran Dhaka Tikatoli. My father was a retired Professor of Orthopaedic & Chairman of RIHD.  I have two older brothers, and two daughters. My wife, Sadia Haque, works with me at ShareTrip as the Chief Commercial Officer. I worked for 10 years since 2004 at Grameenphone and Banglalink. Then I quit to start this venture.

2. You previously worked at two renowned telecom sectors like Grameenphone & Banglalink. How was your experience in that field?

– I started from scratch at Grameenphone. The first time I got a job after graduation was at Grameenphone, but it was outside Dhaka. They offered me the job of regional manager at Rajshahi, Sylhet, and Khulna, but I was adamant not to leave Dhaka and didn’t take the job. But then I couldn’t get a job anywhere else, and when I did, the salary was too low. I looked for jobs for 2-3 months until I went back to Grameenphone. They asked me four questions which were regarding my name, my university’s name, if I’d be willing to work outside Dhaka, and when I could join them. That’s it.

They made batches of 60-70 people and sent us to work. I collected & sorted SAFs (Subscriber Form) for a week  before they transferred me to work at a call centre. I worked at the Bengali call centre first, and then at the English call centre to finally work at corporate within 2-3 months.

I left Grameenphone to join Banglalink corporate where I worked for two years. Then there was a project that they wanted me to work on. And, again after 2-3 years, they asked me to take responsibility of another project on the post-paid sim cards (TeleSales). The team consisted of 40 people, 20 of which were callers, 10-12 were salespersons with the rest being the support team. This team used to sell 1,000-1,200 sim cards per month, and by the time I left the job after 3 years, the team consisted of 700 people selling around 25,000 Post Paid Connections on a monthly basis. So that is something I’m proud of. I had built it from scratch.

3. If you continued, you would have been promoted to much higher positions by now. What inspired you to leave your job to become an entrepreneur?

– Honestly when I left, everyone told me that it was a very bold move. I don’t know if they were impressed or were mocking me, but people did make such comments.

Yes, I was confident, but I also had a good support system. I came from a family where everyone had decent jobs with my father being a renowned doctor and my wife also working at Banglalink when I left. So, I didn’t have to worry that much financially, and I could take risks.

4. What is the reason behind getting into the travel business? And how did you come up with the idea of Travel Booking BD?

– It’s because I personally love to travel. I got married in 2007, and since then me and wife, Sadia, travelled to at least 2 places every year. But, yes, people didn’t really used to travel much back then.

I always wanted to travel. The first time I sat on a plane was when I was 6 and we went to Kolkata, and then the next time was when we went to Thailand when I was 9. But these were my father’s work-related trips, we didn’t exactly travel and have fun.

But I really like to travel, and I did twice a year with my wife. We always used to look for travel-hacks, and we did find some amazing ones, including one which helped us go to London for only 28,000 Taka. And, I also had a blog where I wrote about my trips. So, people started to notice, and they started asking me for tips on travelling. And at some point, the questions started to come in so frequently that it hampered my work. That’s when I decided to start a business around it, and, to be completely honest, if only one ticket got booked through it, I would have considered a success.

I opened a Facebook page with the name ‘Travel Booking BD’ in 2013, and we were the first one to prove that you can conduct business in the travelling sector through Facebook. And I got to book 5 tickets in the first month.

I was working at Banglalink by day, and then answering queries at night. Then one day, I provided 20-25 packages under the title ‘Where Do You Want To Go?’ and I received around 700 questions! I didn’t go to work for 2 days and answered each and every one of them, and by the end of the month, I received a profit of 15-16 lakhs. Back then, I didn’t really consider it a business, so I didn’t think about investing it in anything. Instead I sold my car that I had bought on a loan, and got a new one.

Work went on, profit kept coming in and after a while, I couldn’t cope with it anymore. So, eventually I quit my job at Banglalink. Then I set up a small office in Banani with 3 people working there. Within 6 months, we had to shift to a bigger office because there wasn’t space for employees, and again we had to shift to an even larger one within 9 months for more employees.

5. What’s the difference between Travel Booking BD and ShareTrip?

– ‘Travel Booking BD’ was a very catchy yet generic name. People used to forget the name very often, but the name consisted of very easy keywords, and its website still comes up when people search for related terms. I’m not very emotionally invested in the name. Of course, it’s my baby but I don’t really care that its name got changed. Besides, the new name serves the purpose of sharing more accurately.

6. How did ShareTrip gain a huge customers base in such a short period of time?

– Even though we were very small, we had a good decent base on social media. During the transition, we educated our customers as to what Travel Booking BD was to become in the future. We had data on our customers for the previous 4 years, and we were aggressively trying to be prominent on the digital platform. And, on top of that, we have an app that nobody else does in Bangladesh right now. Also, having reasonable price with the best products will obviously bring you customers.

7. Do you have any business partners?

– The board of directors consists of me and my wife, Sadia Haque. She left her job at Banglalink in 2016 after my younger daughter was born. And when my younger daughter was a bit older, she started working with me. She has 10 years of experience working at Grameenphone Market Communication, BBC World Service, Nokia and then Banglalink. Now, she is looking after Marketing, HR, and Customer Service at ShareTrip.

We have another team member, Shibly Sadiq, who is the Chief Sales Officer. He has 13 years of experience, working at Aamra (WE Mobile) and Banglalink. He is also a former university friend of mine.

Also, ShareTrip Executive Team consists of CEO CCO CTO & CSO.

8. Are you planning on expanding Share Trip globally like OYO or others?

– Yes, eventually. Why not? And when we do, we may start with Nepal and Sri Lanka, but we still have a long way to go in the Bangladeshi Market.

9. How has the pandemic affected the travel industry?

– Nobody knows for sure when things will be normal again, but yeah, the travel sector was the first to be affected and it will be the last to heal. Of course, it’s scary, but we are using this time to enhance our products and features. Hopefully when it is all over, we will come back stronger with better opportunities. We trust our customers to stay loyal to us, so we are focusing on developing our products to be more informative and user-friendly.

10. Where is your favourite vacation spot?

– Maldives.

11. What would be your advice to young entrepreneurs?

• Work hard, be honest, and believe in Allah. You have to be patient for things to work out. And, before becoming an entrepreneur, if you work at MNCs or local companies and gain experience, it will definitely help you in the long run.