The State Of Startup Funding In Bangladesh In 2016

During the past 10 months, “startups blossomed, new startups launched, new investments happened, new VC Fund launched and much more exciting stuff happened from both public and private sectors. Said that, we have a long way to go.

The number of potential and equally serious startups is slim, investment is not as easy to get as it needs to be, we are yet to have a couple of locally developed incubators and accelerator programs except recently launched GP Accelerator and the overall ecosystem is far from mature.

However, despite all these shortcomings, there are startups that have achieved the incredible feat, grown significantly, built solid businesses, raised money locally and internationally and made us optimistic about a better tomorrow.”

This is the intro that we wrote here, but hate to write now. Because it does not give a damn clue about what’s happening in the field. To be honest, what’s happening in the field is depressing: from the both points of view, at the rate new investment is happening and availability of investment worthy startups.

Number one point to take home here is that: there is not enough serious startups out there. We have bunch of ecommerce companies running on hype. We have many more digital marketing companies running on likes, clicks and FB ad dollars and we have a lot of ubers and there is a growing list of ecosystem builders.

At FS, one of our key principles is we hate to talk negatives, call out names for the sake of calling out names, and discouraging people from doing good work in whatever small ways possible. We also dislike to portray a gloomy picture. But when the picture is really gloomy and when things are exactly that we don’t want it to be, we feel responsible to report that so that you can prepare and we can make some course corrections.

The first half of 2016 saw a decent funding activity in Dhaka’s startup ecosystem. Angel and VC, both investment trend remained slow. Part of the reason, we think, is lack of startups that are serious and have traction.

Although, there is a positive vibe and continuous buzz in the industry, international investors are not showing that much interest in Bangladesh market. Here is a somewhat complete list of startups that raised money in the past two halfs of the 2016.

Startups from GP Accelerator

Note: If you know a startup that raised investment but we missed to add here, please drop us a line at nezam@futurestartup.com