Bangladesh Youth Enterprise Advice & Helpcentre (B'Yeah), a not-for-profit organization established in 2007 to empower young Bangladeshis who want to start their own business, and Future Startup, an online platform building local knowledge infrastructure for enabling entrepreneurship in Bangladesh, announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership with the ambition to promote entrepreneurship education and enable entrepreneurship in Bangladesh.
B'Yeah has been working on launching an incubator program to support early-stage founders tackling United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Under the new partnership, Future Startup will support B'Yeah in running the incubator program as a knowledge partner in curriculum development, program design, and building a network to support the incubatee companies.
Speaking about the partnership, B’YEAH Executive Director Md. Rashed Mamun says: “We are excited to have Future Startup with us in implementing a common vision of creating a resilient support system for our youth, especially the underserved ones so that they can make the most of their talents. We work as the enabling factor for the disadvantaged, unemployed, or under-employed youth by helping them set up their own business, and to deepen our impact, we aim to create a locally rooted Incubator program focusing on ideas that will have a direct contribution to achieving the development goals of the Bangladesh Government. As Future Startup is working towards the ambition to build a local knowledge infrastructure in Bangladesh, I firmly believe, our collaboration will immensely contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Bangladesh.”
Mohammad Ruhul Kader, founder of Future Startup says: "We are delighted to have this opportunity to work with B’YEAH. Entrepreneurship is a long-tail game. We can only grow the number of successful companies if we can enable more people to start companies. To that end, we believe B’YEAH has been doing important work in empowering the underserved community, and their recent work to launch an incubator program will help further accelerate the entrepreneurial movement in Bangladesh.
Established in 2007, B'YEAH works with young people aged 18-35, who would like to start or grow their own business, but lack the education or experience needed. They provide training, access to finance, voluntary mentoring, and other business development services. Future Startup runs Bangladesh’s largest knowledge and information hub on entrepreneurship and technology business giving people access to deeply-reported insight, analysis, inspiration, and tools to start and build enterprises in Bangladesh.
Startup accelerator programs support early-stage, growth-driven startups through education, mentorship, network, and funding. These programs usually are fixed-term — between 3 to 6 months in length, cohort-based, and usually end with a demo day or pitch event. Accelerator programs often try to help accelerate the growth of the participating company by putting together learning of a few years into a few months.
While Dhaka has several accelerator programs that support early-stage companies — some prominent ones include GP Accelerator, YGAP, YY Ventures, R-Ventures, etc., early-stage startups remain under-supported. B’YEAH launching an incubator will certainly help improve the overall support ecosystem for early-stage entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.
Cover photo courtesy: B'YEAH
