1. Give us a brief introduction to yourself, your childhood, and your academic background.

I was born in the independence year of 1971 and brought up here in Dhaka. My father was a government employee. I grew up in a middle-class family amidst the metropolitan, which significantly impacted my upbringing and cultural background. I completed Ssc from Ideal High school and Hsc from Notre Dame College. Later I studied Economics at Dhaka University. Despite being a student with a science background, I pursued economics out of sheer passion as I wanted to have a significant impact on society through my work, and I believed I could achieve so by becoming an economist. However, my family had other ideas; they wanted me to become an engineer or a doctor like any other typical family would expect. While pursuing my bachelor’s degree, at one point, I realized that If I really wanted to contribute to the growth of my country, I had to create something rather than analyze how society operates. That was when I realized I needed to create a platform through which I would impact many lives. With that goal, I pursued an MBA from IBA. I always preferred to think beyond the boundaries and create something impactful to benefit society. I was pretty determined with this vision; hence, I never thought of pursuing a career abroad or getting into any conventional government or private job. I was determined and devoted to creating something not done before in our country. During my student life, I was also involved with various student welfare organizations, where I significantly worked towards establishing a positive environment for Dhaka university students. 

2. During your time, entrepreneurship was a whole new concept. Being an emerging entrepreneur during that time, how was the experience? 

After graduation, I worked for a year to get some foundational experience and later found BDjobs in 2000, beginning my entrepreneurial journey. During those days, people barely understood the concept of a startup. Therefore, there were no training facilities or guidelines to prepare yourself as an entrepreneur like in recent times. Back in my time, entrepreneurship was considered madness. During those times, the typical middle-class expectations were limited to getting an ordinary job or going abroad after graduation, which is a mindset that persists till now. Although entrepreneurship is considered an option now and is gaining acceptance in society, it was not the same when I started. People perceived entrepreneurship as the last resolve or the last career option you’d pick, and choosing entrepreneurship despite having a solid academic background and career options; I received a lot of criticism from the people around me. But I was pretty fortunate that my family always supported me and inspired me to do what I was pursuing.

Another thing I was pretty lucky with, which most people are not, was that my family was not dependent on me financially. Like any other middle-class family that expects their sons to contribute to the family financially after they graduate, it was not the case with me. This enabled me to pursue my goal, which is certainly not the case for everyone as I know a lot of prospective entrepreneurs who suppressed their dreams solely to support their families. Therefore, I am immensely grateful to my family. That was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. At our initial times, the capital was not one of our strengths, and the concept of funding barely existed. Whatever we had to start with was our own funding. So, I, along with the co-founders who used to work in various companies, contributed to raising funds to initiate BDJobs. In the initial 3 years, we spent only 10-12 lakh taka, which is the monthly expense for recent startups. We knew we had limited capital; therefore, we focused more on bringing the best result out of it. I started BDjobs from my own drawing-room, with two employees, one programmer, and one for data entry works. The rest of the work was done by me.

We couldn’t afford an office back then. We wanted to fully utilize our capital to run longer as, in Bangladesh perspective, running a startup here is more like a marathon than a sprint. The concept of a marathon is to conserve your energy, be consistent, and run as long as possible, whereas a sprint is running as fast as you can and giving it all at once. Although that is also a model that might work in environments like Silicon Valley, where there is a well-established funding structure which is not the case in our country. I told my other partners to do jobs, which was our initial funding source, while I was committed to full-time developing our business. I did not take any salary from the company in the first 3 years and invested all my savings. My co-partners would also contribute a portion of their salary every month. That was our initial business model, not a very common model, I’d say, but we always had the dream and conviction that this would pay off one day or another. We were pretty realistic with our expectations, as we never expected any magic overnight; we knew it would take time. We started in 2000 and reached our breakeven in 2004, after 4 years of our initiation. Our primary goal was to have a higher number of users during that time. Because as a tech-driven media, it was essential for us to grow audiences fast. We have 2 end-users: the corporates who post the job and the others who seek employment, and our initial target was to develop an audience who seek employment. To ensure so, we used to collect job information from traditional newspapers and post them on our website. Initially, it was entirely free of cost as we aimed to achieve a high number of conversions. After 2-3 years, when we gradually developed a habit among the users to use our platform, we went to the corporates. We told them that there is a large audience on our website who seek jobs using our platform. Why don’t you post vacancies on our platform for a fraction of the cost of a newspaper advertisement?”

Gradually many corporates joined us, and our business started rolling, and after 2004 we started growing exponentially. For the first 8-9 years, our growth rate crossed 3 digits; it was over 100%+, and till now, despite the market has become significantly matured, we still have a growth rate of 20%-30%. 

3. When you found BDjobs in 2000, Digital Bangladesh was still not a vision that existed. How do you see the journey of digital Bangladesh from 2000 to 2022? 

I think it is a global phenomenon, we have globally stepped into a digital era. This change is not confined to Bangladesh, but it is an international prospect. When we initiated our journey back in 2000, the internet was not that available for the mass consumers, neither were mobile phones, although there were a lot of discussions around it. But, the global revolution happened when smartphones started becoming available for the masses during 2010-2014. With the availability of smartphones, the internet began to spread in every home. Initially, the internet was more desktop-centric and belonged to the elites; even in our initial 10 years, we mainly focused on the urban user groups as all recruiters and job seekers were from urban areas. After 2013-2014, it became a mass phenomenon because of the gradual progress of the mobile internet. But I think around 40% of people are still disconnected from the internet despite having a smartphone due to the data cost being very high. People nowadays can afford smartphones but not the data expenses. Bangladesh has undergone a digital revolution like every other country. But I personally feel the digital transformation should have been more impactful as it has been a commitment to us which was not the case with other countries. I think we have been unsuccessful due to the lack of institutional readiness. I think the authorities were successful in giving the directives. Still, the bureaucracy or the organizations responsible for the execution could not successfully deliver what they were asked for. Therefore, till now, numerous sectors are yet to be digitized. For example, all the private organization now post their vacancies online, whereas the government job vacancies are still published in offline media such as newspapers. We Still see people waiting in lines to deposit cash in front of the banks even during covid, and this is a common scenario between public and private banks. The main problem behind that is most likely that the organizations and the people in authority are not prepared to digitalize the infrastructure. But we often see them blaming the mass consumers saying they are not ready, whereas I feel the general people are tech-savvy enough to adapt to the digitization. They are much ahead, and by general people, I am addressing all kinds of people because when Bkash initially started its operation, their primary customers were the underlying population living in villages. If they can do digital transactions, everyone can do so. Therefore, if a bank says that their customers are not ready to adapt to digital banking, it is a false claim indicating their shortcoming and lack of adaptability with digital infrastructure. Technological adaptation comes naturally, and I think the people who are leading the institutions should be more proactive and possess a risk-taking mentality to experiment more with technology and take risks to make the vision of digital Bangladesh more vivid. 

4. Getting back to BDjobs, once it started, many large institutions came up with the same concept but could not sustain it despite many investments. What might be the reason behind it? 

I think there is no secret to it. Since the inception of BDjobs, we have been able to assure that we have been highly focused. The organization came into the market after we had many other ventures alongside their job portal; therefore, their focus was not centralized. I think the primary thing that was the secret of our success was our dedicated focus. Many of the companies perceived that technology was the key to becoming successful in this industry which was actually not the case. Yes, technology might be a key point to address in this case, but cultural adaptation played a key role. BDdjobs is not a new concept worldwide; there have been many job portals worldwide before we started, but the key point behind our success was being able to adapt to the local culture. Besides that, we did have a first-mover advantage as we are the pioneers of job portals locally.

5. Form 2000 to 2022, you have seen the job culture very closely, both from the recruiter and job seeker end; what are the significant changes you saw in the last 22 years?

Initially, when we started, we saw a lot of job seekers interested in private-sector jobs. A significant portion of government job seekers was mostly from non-urban areas. But in the last decade, there has been a tremendous shift. Regardless of the social barriers most applicants seek, even in the urban-centric, applicants are growing a keen interest in government jobs which is quite interesting. Previously private university students were quite reluctant about government jobs, but the scenario is just the other way around if you see it recently. If you conduct a survey in the private universities, you will find a significant portion of students interested in a government job, which is quite astonishing. There are quite a few reasons behind it. Firstly, the salary and benefits of government jobs have increased significantly in the last decade compared to the private sectors. Previously, we saw the private sector as being financially lucrative. Nowadays, it is just the other way around as government jobs are more economically secure and involve other benefits. 

6. Speaking of the current scenario that you have described, according to you, how will it impact the growth of private organizations?

The private sectors are already facing a threat as all the fresh talents either choose government jobs or move abroad. So gradually, the private sector is being deprived of good quality talents. Besides that, there are failures of employee retention among the SMEs who create a significant portion of employment in our country. Nowadays, SMEs have become more like training institutes as many graduates join the organizations. They work for one or two years to gain experience but do not want a long-term career in those organizations. They either take that as their launching pad and either prepare themselves for BCS or go for higher studies abroad. The SMEs are training them, giving them opportunities, but after one or two years, they leave, and hence these organizations are also having a hard time in terms of expansion and growth. So the main reason behind the lack of growth in the private sector is talent drainage, as the government sector, alongside the banking institutions, are taking most of the talent. But the government and the banking industry can only employ 20% of the entire population, and because these jobs are offering lucrative benefits, the rest of the 80% prefers to remain unemployed and try to get into these jobs instead of pursuing a private career which causes mass frustration among them leading to social decadence like drug addiction and terrorism. Drug abuse is one of the leading social problems, and the main reason behind it is unemployment. We are failing to keep our generation busy pursuing economic activities, and I think it is a massive social crisis. Previously we would say that people were unemployed due to their lack of skills, but nowadays, it is more like people are unemployed due to their lack of eagerness in pursuing private jobs. We need to create an environment where the population who are not getting government or bank jobs will happily work in the private sector and contribute to the country’s economy, society, and family. 

7. Having said that, we often notice a job switch culture, where the employees tend to switch their jobs within a short period. How do you see that?

Job switching is not a recent phenomenon; It has always been like that. There’s a reason behind it. When it comes to the companies I founded, I often tend to hire freshers. 90% of the employees who work for my ventures are mostly freshers. Although it is a bit expensive for me as I am training them from scratch, as I am giving them the opportunity and training them, they have a lesser tendency of shifting. But when it comes to most of the companies in Bangladesh, they do not want to take that route; instead, they tend to hire trained people who are trained elsewhere, which is a significant reason behind job switching. Most companies do not like to take the challenge of hiring freshers; if they did, the switching culture would be minimized to quite an extent. 

8. We have seen the whole entrepreneurial journey of Bangladesh, and it has grown and still growing as we speak; what’s your opinion on the whole scenario? 

In my view, Bangladesh is a land of entrepreneurs. The fact that Bangladesh is known as the land of microcredit is because of the movement Grameen bank started 30-40 years ago. Particularly our female entrepreneurs are globally recognized. There were a lot of entrepreneurs who emerged after the liberation war who have initiated companies like Pran, and even you consider the garments industry; the industry started through the initiatives of our first generation of entrepreneurs. That clearly reflects that we have actually had quite an entrepreneurial culture, but our ecosystem is not yet entrepreneur-friendly. If we establish an entrepreneur-friendly, we could achieve wonders. If we speak about the recent startup perspective, this is a trend that is ongoing worldwide because of the evolution of VC culture. We saw this starting in India 10-15 years back; later, it spread to Indonesia and Pakistan. This is happening because of the global surplus of the fund, which is being invested in tech industries all over the world. It is too early to say whether it is sustainable or not, as we see many companies running with VC funds, and gradually they fail and close down. There are several similar cases in India also. So it is also uncertain for the VCs. But if you think the other way around, only 30-40 of the startups in Bangladesh have received funding from the VCs, which is not sufficient to create employment for the millions. I think VC startup is helpful for a few companies, but if we focus on it too much or consider it the only way, we are not moving in the right direction. We have to create a good environment internally for the startups where more individuals who are willing to invest alongside the banks will be more interested in investing locally. Because in the future, there is no certainty of foreign investments, and also, global investments are very selective. There is a perception that Bangladesh will receive billions of dollars which will change the face of Bangladesh in the international arena, which is actually not the case. Yes, Bangladesh has received over 100-million-dollar investment, but 90% of that went to two companies, which are Bkash and ShopUp. The funding was not spread among hundreds of companies. But when you consider startups, there are thousands of companies; it is not only about Bkash and ShopUp. So it is essential to create an investment ecosystem. VC ecosystem and establish policies locally to help other small startups to flourish. 

9. Speaking of domestic investment, most of the individual investors locally often fear whether they will get the right return on their investment, and the startup they are investing in would make the right utilization of the funds. What’s your opinion on that? 

Obviously, there is a risk factor. Therefore, it is difficult for private investors to invest in the traditional startups we mainly talk about, such as e-commerce, ride-sharing, food delivery services, because it is much more suitable for the VCs to invest. VCs have a higher appetite for risk, which is not the case for domestic investors. So I feel there should be different types of startups categorized according to the investment risks. Every venture doesn’t need to become unicorns. For example, BDjobs is not a unicorn but a very successful startup making a considerable amount of profit. I think as policymakers and opinion leaders, we should appreciate and give respect to all the entrepreneurs who are contributing to the economy and employability regarding their valuation. We have to remember that valuation is just a byproduct. If we think of it as the primary priority, we are thinking in the wrong direction.

10. In terms of Bangladeshi VC culture and fundraising scenario, many startups claim that a significant portion of the investment is going to a few industries. What is the reason behind such a move?

The VCs often pursue similar kinds of companies according to the present trends. For example, a few years back, there was quite a buzz related to ride-sharing platforms, which we do not see nowadays. Currently, they are investing more in B2B commerce or fintech. So when the focus shifts, it creates a lot of fund crises. Therefore, you have to be self-serving to succeed, as I previously mentioned. 

11. How do you see the entrepreneurship culture outside Dhaka and the emerging opportunities?

As most of the entrepreneurship culture is growing around the capital, We do not often see many entrepreneurs outside Dhaka, whereas there are many opportunities there if you ask me. Mainly as agriculture is a significant area of focus and there are global talks about agrotech, the entrepreneurs outside Dhaka have a more substantial opportunity to get into this market.

12. We hear a lot from the corporates that many employees who could become CEO at a point in their career chose to become entrepreneurs. How do you see that? 

You see, the people who are destined to pursue a corporate career will eventually stay in the corporate sector. Yes, many individuals seek entrepreneurship as a fashion that is not the right thing to do. If you cannot embrace the pain of entrepreneurship, you cannot become successful in this field, which is also harmful to that individual alongside the other stakeholders. You need to be mentally rigid to be an entrepreneur. One should pursue entrepreneurship only if you are determined enough and can endure the pain that comes along with it. Alongside that, you need to put your flesh and blood alongside your finances into the business. When it comes to BDjobs and AjkerDeal, I am still the most prominent individual investor. It’s okay to take investments from outside if you are short in capital, but you have to put everything you have.

13. How do you see the post covid investment scenario increasing or decreasing?

It is still too early to say. In fact, the VC money increased during the post-Covid situation in the international scenario. Many countries like Pakistan have come into the VC scene. But despite that, the Bangladeshi market remained relatively unaffected. I hope there will be a significant rise in investment In Bangladesh, but we can not solely depend on that. We need to keep a positive mindset to keep our progress going even if we do not receive any external investments.

14. As there are little to no domestic investments, the startups have difficulty raising funds. What is your view on that?

Fundraising is challenging unless you get fortunate. You have to put your efforts into generating self-revenue, and it is possible to assure so if you have a good product. As I previously said, startups in Bangladesh should take a marathon approach rather than a sprint. You need to properly utilize your resources to sustain yourself in the long run. If you overspent and failed to raise your expected funds, you might be putting your company at risk of shutting down.

15. Apart from BDjobs, what are your other involvements, and what can we expect from you in the coming days?

Apart from BDjobs, we have been operating AjkerDeal for the last 7 years. Another company I am pretty involved in is Delivery Tiger, a logistics and FinTech company. I expect to increase my involvement in the logistics and FinTech industries in the coming years.