In 2017, Light of Hope was expanding its Porua library project across Bangladesh. The company needed quality children's books and naturally turned to the obvious sources: major international NGOs and local NGOs working in the education space. Many of these organizations had produced excellent children's books through its donor-funded projects, often using top authors and maintaining high production standards.
But there was a catch.
These books simply weren't available for purchase. When projects ended, the books vanished. Policy constraints prevented sales, even when Waliullah Bhuiyan, founder of Light of Hope, offered to pay for printing rights or handle production himself.
The organizations had created high-quality content, then locked it away.
This is a classic example of what economists call the "missing market" problem. High-quality content existed, demand existed, but institutional structures prevented the two from meeting.
The NGOs operated under project-based funding models that didn't incentivize sustainable distribution. They optimized for project completion, not market creation.
Compounding this, the general quality of local children's books, in terms of narrative depth, illustration, and production, was consistently low.
Furthermore, existing materials, even from non-profits, failed to adequately address the future skills framework Light of Hope sought to teach: creativity, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and moral values.
This created what Bhuiyan would later recognize as a massive opportunity to intervene.
The final straw came from an unexpected source.
When the successful collaboration with Sisimpur, Bangladesh's version of Sesame Street, ended after three years, Bhuiyan thought it was time to "build [his] own thing".
Within a week, Bhuiyan had sketched four characters based on his company's core values. He envisioned a universe that would train children for the future, drawing inspiration from Disney, Lego, and ironically, Sesame Street itself.
Thus Goofi was born.
Goofi formally launched in 2019, making a strategic decision to begin with story and activity books, a calculated move that shows sophisticated strategic thinking. The unique cultural power and authority of books instantly made the company a legitimate player in the educational space. Books enjoy a cultural power in every market. Parents, teachers, and educational institutions see books as serious educational tools. Starting with books also allowed Goofi to establish an immediate revenue stream.
More importantly, books function as what platform strategists call elastic content. You can adapt books into multiple formats: audiobooks, animated series, live performances, and merchandise. This elasticity makes books the perfect foundation for building a broader media ecosystem.
The insight here is about choosing the right foundation layer. Many startups chase the latest distribution channels, but Bhuiyan recognized that content quality and credibility were more important than distribution. Build great content first, then expand distribution.
Goofi entered a Bangladeshi children's publishing market characterized by low quality and a lack of innovation. Goofi consciously introduced several disruptions to this status quo.
The company popularized the concept of launching storybooks as themed sets rather than single titles. This served multiple strategic purposes. Parents preferred purchasing themed sets, simplifying the buying process.
Aligned with early childhood development theories, Goofi understood that to instill a value or skill, it needs to be presented to a child a minimum of five times in different scenarios. Sets allowed for a thematic approach to embed values like empathy or skill like problem solving across multiple stories.
By creating sets priced around 800-900 taka, Goofi could offer attractive margins to retailers. This incentivized supermarkets to stock Goofi books alongside fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), a then-uncommon practice for books in Bangladesh.
Goofi's in-house team of writers, designers, and educators dedicates an insane amount of time, effort, and investment into developing each book series.
Goofi's has built a sophisticated and scalable creative process to develop content for its books.
The company plans content 1-2 years in advance through structured workshops involving writers, designers, and educators.
Every story follows three core principles. Breaking Geographical Boundary - Stories work across cultures and languages. Breaking Time Boundary - Content remains relevant decades into the future. And breaking Generational Boundary - the story should work for both children and adults and both should find value.
By forcing universal themes and following Universal Design for Learning (UDL) technique, Goofi creates content that can scale globally. By requiring temporal relevance, it avoids topical content that becomes outdated. By ensuring generational appeal, it increases household adoption rates.
Illustrations are created as a foundation for animation. Even children who cannot read can understand the story just by looking at the pictures.
Goofi deliberately introduces children to a variety of art styles such as tepa doll style, Gazir Pot style, drawing inspiration from masters like Jamini Roy, and even using unique techniques like paper cutting, to cultivate imagination and expose children to different ways of storytelling through art.
This starkly contrasts the uniform style prevalent in the local market.
Goofi Book’s bold and outsider initiatives didn’t take long to produce results. In the 2020 Ekusye Book Fair, its first participation in such a fair, the company sold out its expensive book sets (up to 1600 taka) despite widespread skepticism. The success validated its approach.
The business has grown significantly since its inception, serving as the foundation for the broader Goofi universe.
The company currently has over 80 titles, covering a wide age range, from three to twelve years old. Its catalog includes both academic books (e.g., focusing on language, math, critical thinking) and storybooks.
A notable initiative is the Bornogolpo (বর্ণগল্প) series, which aims to create 49-50 storybooks, each based on a Bengali alphabet character. The "Banglar Gupodhon" (বাংলার গুপ্তধন) series is specifically targeted at pre-teens and teenagers aged 10-12.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Goofi pivoted to online sales, which proved highly successful due to the engaging nature and quality of its books. This period also saw significant investment in content development.
Goofi's revenue model is diversified, with direct sales of books being a key stream. The company believes there is a 500 to 1000 crore BDT annual business opportunity for a single brand in Bangladesh, encompassing books, toys, and other products. The toy market in Bangladesh is a BDT 12,000 crore annual business, with no reputed brand. So, the target to turn Goofi into a BDT 500-1000 crore business is not highly ambitious.
Goofi has an in-house content development team comprising scriptwriters, content writers, and storytellers. There are typically five to six writers on the team, most of whom are employed staff rather than external authors. The team conducts workshops with writers, designers, and educators to select topics and themes, ensuring alignment with its skill-building objectives and storytelling principles.
The company has also made a series of changes in terms of distribution. Goofi Books are available in over 150 retail locations through a shop-in-shop model in stores like Unimart, Infinity Mega Mall. Directly through its website and via partners like Rokomari, Daraz, and Chaldal.
Many schools incorporate Goofi books into their curriculum or feature them in libraries. Participation in and organization of various events for sales and engagement.
Books are supplied to educational projects, such as Light of Hope's Porua project, which provides access to quality books for underprivileged children. Some Goofi books are available on Amazon in several international markets, including the USA, UK, Australia, and Germany.
Goofi's success demonstrates how a single player can inspire change in an entire industry. By proving that Bangladeshi consumers would pay for high-quality children's content, the company has helped raise standards in an entire industry.
Goofi's story doesn’t end with its success in books. The success in books has led to the expansion of its characters and stories into other media, including animated TV shows, audio content, learning toys, and live events.
With over 80 titles covering ages 2 to 12, including academic activity books and storybooks, the books serve as the initial content that is then expanded across multiple platforms.
Books remain Goofi's foundation, but the real value creation happens through systematic platform expansion. The company has built an integrated media ecosystem where each component reinforces the others.
Stories migrate from books to animated TV shows on channels like Duronto TV, reaching 2.5 million children and scaling messages beyond physical book limitations. This isn't just content repurposing, it's strategic amplification of the book's core value.
Puppet versions of book characters perform in schools. When children see their favorite book characters come to life, the learning impact multiplies.
Companies like Dettol and Shokti+ partner with Goofi to reach children through trusted characters. NGOs like WaterAid use the platform to deliver messages about good behavior and hygiene. The books create the emotional foundation that makes these partnerships effective.
Physical products extend the book experience while generating additional revenue streams. Children can play with toys featuring characters they've read about, creating multi-sensory learning experiences.
This ecosystem demonstrates the power of network effects. Each platform strengthens the others. TV shows drive book sales. Book popularity makes puppet shows more effective. Character recognition enables merchandising. The whole becomes more valuable than the sum of its parts.
Within the broader Light of Hope (LoH) universe, Goofi is recognized as the most scalable brand.
The evolution followed a deliberate sequence.
First, establish credibility through high-quality books. Then, leverage that credibility to expand into television with animated series. Next, bring characters to life through puppet shows in schools. Finally, build a platform that external brands can use to reach children effectively.
Each layer strengthens the foundation while creating new opportunities. The books establish character recognition. TV shows scale the reach. Live events deepen engagement. The integrated ecosystem creates defensive moats, as characters become more popular, the platform becomes more valuable to partners.
Goofi has ambitious plans for its books segment that remains central to its broader media universe business.
The company plans to complete its Bornogolpo (বর্ণগল্প) series, a unique initiative to create 49-50 storybooks, each based on a Bengali alphabet character. The series aims to expand children's vocabulary and convey various themes. As of early 2025, six series were complete, with the seventh in progress, intending to cover all Bengali alphabets up to Chondrobindu. Goofi also aims to continue developing series like Banglar Gupodhon (বাংলার গুপ্তধন), which targets pre-teens and teenagers (10-12 years old) and focuses on history and culture.
In the long term, the company aims to expand globally. While some of its books are already available in English, the ambition is to reach 70% of the world's children by translating content into the top seven languages globally. The company eyes partnership and royalty model with foreign publishers, where Goofi licenses its stories for local printing and distribution, similar to how international books enter Bangladesh.
Goofi says it is confident that the quality of its books can compete with global offerings.
The Goofi story illustrates several important business principles about content-driven platform building.
Market gaps often hide in plain sight. The children's book quality problem in Bangladesh was obvious to anyone involved in education, but most people accepted it as unchangeable. Bhuiyan saw an opportunity where others saw an intractable problem.
Content platforms beat product thinking. While competitors focused on individual books, Goofi built a content ecosystem that could expand across multiple formats and revenue streams. The books were never the end goal, they were the foundation for something larger.
Quality can be a sustainable competitive advantage. In markets where everyone competes on price, superior quality can create premium positioning and better unit economics. But quality must be systematic, not accidental.
Sometimes the best strategy is to start small and think big. Goofi began with books for the Bangladeshi market but designed everything for global scaling from day one. The local success proved the concept; the global vision guided the execution.
The story of Goofi Books shows how deep industry knowledge, strategic thinking, and patient execution can create outsized value. In a world where digital disruption dominates headlines, sometimes the most profound changes come from perfecting the fundamentals and building systematically toward a larger vision.
The key insight is recognizing that great businesses often start by solving seemingly simple problems. Waliullah Bhuiyan needed quality books for his children's libraries. Instead of accepting the status quo, he built a solution that is helping transform an entire industry.
