1. How We Built SWAP With Parvez Hossain: In this wide-ranging interview with Future Startup's Tithi Chowdhury, SWAP Founder and CEO Parvez Hossain reflects on his journey to what he is doing today, talks about how SWAP came into being and has grown from a small operation to a dominant reCommerce player in Dhaka, the state of SWAP’s business today and ambition going forward, offers insight into the reCommerce industry in Bangladesh, shares his takes on building businesses from scratch, and reflects on the lessons he has learned from his journey so far, and much more. Link
2. Medicine Delivery Startup Arogga Raises $200k: Bangladeshi medicine delivery startup Arogga announced that it has secured $200k in seed funding from new angel investors, and follow-on investment from Dubai-based Falcon Network. Link
3. DataBird Raises $3M In Bridge Round: DataBird, Bangladesh's leading Internet group, recently raised $3 million in funding led by Skycatcher, a global Internet and software investor. Previously, the company raised a Seed round of $4 million in 2018. Link
4. 7 Bangladeshi EdTech Startups to Watch: Online education has slowly been gaining momentum in Bangladesh. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this pace. Education technology startups have been receiving increased attention from both users and investors since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic — at least three local education technology startups raised investment of different sizes in the past several months. Link.
5. Alice Labs Raises US$500k in Seed Investment: Alice Labs, a Dhaka-based startup that provides multi-channel customer service solution and virtual assistant to ecommerce and online businesses, announced that it has raised US$500,000 in seed investment, per Tech In Asia. The round is led by New York-based VC Anchorless Bangladesh and participated by HOF Capital. Link.
6. Comprehensive Strategy Needed For SME Businesses Battered by The Pandemic: Small businesses losing ground to the pandemic means more grim stories to follow. Stores will shut. Livelihood will be lost. Employment opportunities will dim — an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study suggests SMEs generate 70 to 80% of non-agricultural sector jobs in Bangladesh. Link.
| We have also published an excellent collection of interviews and essays in the past two weeks, read them here. |
Permitting intensity. Link (recommended)
New magazine I'm enjoying: Works In Progress. Link
Building Products at Stripe. Link
How Guy Raz Built ‘How I Built This’. Link
That's all for this week. if you enjoy this newsletter, share it with others.
