At 3 o’clock every night, a middle-aged lady walks into a building, all alone. In the large hall room of the building, 196 electric powered looms run twenty-four hours a day to produce hundreds of tons of saris every week. Sacrificing her sleep and comfort at this hour of the night, the lady supervises every machine and its operators personally and scrutinizes every step of the entire production system at least twice a day. This energetic, hardworking lady, Rosy Begum is the owner of this large sharee producing factory, Sakib Textiles, which supplies sharees of different qualities to some of the largest Sharee sellers of Bangladesh.
Ejaj Ahmad is the Founder and President of Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC). In this interview, he reflects on how his early life experiences and passion for public service and leadership shaped his future, the impetus behind starting BYLC, the current state of BYLC and his future plans for the organization, talks about his management philosophy and how he looks at the idea of leadership and life and how a strong sense of our own mortality can help us to live a meaningful
life.
Life is short and ephemeral in nature, as Ejaj contemplates here, “our life is finite,” then he continues as if it occurs to him that “our impact can be infinite” if only we do things that matter and add value to the lives of others. The entire interview is sublime, insightful, and intellectually empowering. We believe Ejaj’s story will elevate you and inspire you to choose life over the mere living.
Dr. Syed Ferhat Anwar is a top-rated professor at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka. He is regarded as one of the most influential experts in the field of marketing, strategy, and management in Bangladesh and his ideas have been widely used in organizations and industries across the country. He has authored 3 major books on business management and has over 60 publications in international and national journals.
In this interview Mr. Anwar reflects on his serendipitous journey to teaching, prior to teaching he worked at BRAC- first as a Staff Economist and later as an Export Manager, his idea of teaching as a profession, shares his thoughts on education, our faltering education system that puts undue importance on grades over knowledge and the idea of marketing and changing landscape of the industry, discusses the idea of the knowledge economy, the future of Telecom, Banking and RMG and the traits that separate successful companies and explores the eminent importance of having a purpose in life and why forming an opinion is way more important than having one without proper understanding.
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Ashraf Bin Taj is the co-founder and Managing Director of International Distribution Company Bangladesh (IDC), a fast-growing marketing and distribution company based in Dhaka. Started four years ago with 26 people and one brand, today IDC is a team of 330 people, works with four international brands, has a growing business and eyeing the next phase of expansion.
Ashraf Bin Taj has seen both sides of the aisle. He has decades of experience in working with leading international and local corporations and for the past four years, he has been building his own business. Mr. Ashraf is a people’s person. He says his people skill, developed through extensive participation in extracurricular activities during his school life, has significantly contributed to his career. He speaks slowly often absorbed in his own train of thoughts but with a sense of certainty that emits weight and wisdom of living.
In this interview, Ashraf Bin Taj illustrates his journey to what he is doing today, how IDC came into being, its expansion plans and product strategy to difficulties he had to face due to the lack of support system for early stage companies to how openness and horizontal structure defines its internal culture and why finding right people remains a key challenges for his company and shares his ambition for IDC over the next few years that includes launching its own brand and greater automation and reflects on his management philosophy, hard work of entrepreneurship and why deeper meaning and greater satisfactions of life comes from giving and helping fellow human beings.
Arif Khan, the CEO and Managing Director of IDLC Finance Limited, has an astounding body of work. He started his career in 1991, and over the past 26 years of his career, Mr. Khan had played pivotal role in the lives of a number of private companies, where he worked in different capacities starting from Probationary Officer to CEO and also in public sector as a Commissioner of Securities Exchange Commission where he headed the Demutualization Project of Dhaka Stock Exchange along with many other big projects.
A large part of his career, 15 years to be precise, is spent at IDLC Finance Limited, one of the fast growing and forward thinking Financial institutions in the country, where he designed and led several of its successful products. After leaving IDLC in 2010, Mr. Khan returned to IDLC Finance Limited as a Managing Director and CEO in 2015, a place he calls. “I’m passionate about.”
In an interview with Future Startup, Mr. Khan reflects on his early life and career and how courage and risk shape our life, how he got into accounting and finance, his early career at IDLC and how curiosity, ambition, and hard work drive us, his vision for IDLC now that he is back again, working culture and growth of IDLC and his plans for the fast-growing NBFI of the country, how professional accounts can contribute to the economic development and his plan for ICMAB, the national body for Professional Cost and Management Accountants, of which he is the current President, and why serving others is the most important work of all that can change our life forever.
G M Kamrul Hassan is the Chief Executive Officer at IGLOO, the leading ice cream brand in the country. Mr. Hassan has a diverse career spanning multiple industries. Prior to joining IGLOO, he worked at some of the leading multinationals and local conglomerates including Nestlé, New Zealand Dairy, Rahimafrooz, and PRAN-RFL in various important roles.
Mr. Hassan has been awarded South Asian Business Excellence Award 2017 as the Best CEO in FMCG (Food and Beverage category) hosted by World HRD Congress and Endorsed by Asian Confederation of Businesses in October this year.
In this interview Mr. Hassan walks us through his early life and upbringing, reflects on his journey to what he is doing today, his several decades of career spanning multiple companies and important roles, trials and tribulations he has had to face throughout his career, shares his thoughts on leadership and strategy, talks about his work at IGLOO, current state of the company and his ambition for IGLOO going forward and the future of ice cream industry in Bangladesh, discusses incredible importance of building a solid culture, discusses his management philosophy and why it is important beyond measure to invest in people, explains his ideas for being an effective CEO and growing a business, and reflects on why complacent talent always fail to produce any result, limitation of shortcuts and why it taking a long view of things is incredibly important for a full life.
