In this wide-ranging interview, we sit down with Sheikh Shourav, Founder and President of Apploye, to learn more about his journey to what he is doing, and the inner workings of Apploye, the global SaaS company he is building out of Bangladesh. We talk about his early life and his motivation behind pursuing an entrepreneurial life. The origin of Apploye, the early days of building the product, putting together the team and resources together, going into the market and convincing the first handful of users, and overcoming the challenges of beginning from the scratch. We talk about the state of Apploye’s business today and ambition going forward, reflect on the trials and tribulations of being a founder, the importance of measured pessimism, building a process-driven operation, stoicism, and much more.
There is a new convergence happening in the commerce space. First came the rise of digital commerce across verticals and the conversion of offline commerce into digital. Over the past years, we have seen the convergence happening between online and offline commerce, where online-only operators are getting into offline retail and merging the two using the advantage of data and tech. In China and Southeast Asia, it is now aptly called O2O.
A new convergence is on the rise today, it is the convergence of entertainment and commerce. With the growth of internet and smartphone penetration coupled with the popularity of video content, we are seeing entertainment and shopping is increasingly becoming indistinguishable. This is where a new trend is soaring: live commerce, where you watch videos and shop.
In this excellent interview, we sit down with Rashedun Nabi, Partner, Strategy & Business Development, Next Billion PTE Limited, and a Live Commerce aficionado, to discuss the origin and dynamics of live commerce and the future of live commerce in Bangladesh and his live commerce project at Ajkerdeal, the country’s leading ecommerce platform to launch the first live commerce platform in Bangladesh.
In this wide-ranging interview, we sit down with Ahsan Rony, Founder and CEO of Travel Bangladesh to learn about his path to entrepreneurship, the inner workings of Travel Bangladesh, and the lessons he has learned from his journey so far.
We talk about his motivation for pursuing an entrepreneurial life, the origin of Travel Bangladesh, the early days of building Travel Bangladesh, putting together the team and resources together, going into the market and convincing the first handful of users, and overcoming the challenges of beginning from scratch. We talk about the state of Travel Bangladesh’s business today and ambition going forward, the importance of setting the right priorities, and much more.
Life’s Work: An Interview With Rashed Mujib Noman, Country Director, Augmedix Bangladesh
Rashed Mujib Noman is the Country Director of Augmedix Bangladesh. Augmedix, a US-based provider of remote medical documentation and live clinical support, is “on a mission to rehumanize the clinician-patient relationship and address the largest pain point in the US healthcare system – the burden of documentation.” Born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Mr. Rashed has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, an MS from the University of South Carolina, and an MBA from New York Institute of Technology. Before joining Augmedix, he worked in senior roles at General Motors and the Boeing Company.
In this intellectually empowering interview, Mr. Rashed, reflects on his early life and his journey to becoming who he is today, talks about Augmedix Bangladesh, how Augmedix operates as an organization, its ambition for the Bangladesh market going forward, and shares how much Augmedix has evolved over the years, explores why life is a nonlinear journey, and the hard work and hardships that we desperately want to avoid are universal and are part of our becoming and why we should actively resist the idea of overnight success and work hard on our goal if we want to make a difference and much more.
Sadia Haque is the CCO of DataBird and co-founder of ShareTrip. Before beginning her entrepreneurship journey, Ms. Sadia spent 10+ years in the marketing and branding department of some of the leading brands including Grameenphone, BBC, Nokia, and Banglalink. Currently, she leads DataBird’s marketing, human resources, and customer support efforts.
In this fascinating interview, Ms. Sadia talks about DataBird’s communication philosophy across its portfolio companies, ShareTrip’s digital transformation, and how the travel tech company has built a strong community around travel, dynamics of community building, the interdisciplinary nature of marketing communication, and why marketing is not merely about communicating with the outside world, why your international communication and team dynamics are critical elements for your strategic decisions, shares how she finds the balance between her busy schedule and her personal life, and reflect on why it is critical to take care of ourselves while chasing ambitious goals at work and much more.
Weekly Memo: Chaldal Matures, Eyes Multi-city, New Verticals Expansion
In a brief conversation with Future Startup, Chaldal co-founder and CEO, Waseem Alim, offers us a glimpse into what’s happening at the leading grocery commerce company of the country. We cover Chaldal’s state of operation after a period of steep growth, evolving operation, expansion, and growth plans and priorities for 2021.
DataBird CEO Kashef Rahman on ShareTrip, DataBird, and Building the Internet Ecosystem of Bangladesh
DataBird is a Dhaka-based technology holding company with products across online travel, news, keyboard, eReader, and lifestyle mobile applications. The company claims its services “reach more than half of all smartphone Internet users today in Bangladesh” and it aims higher.
In this excellent interview, we sit down with the always fascinating CEO of DataBird and Founder and CEO of ShareTrip, Kashef Rahman, to learn about how ShareTrip is doing out of the coronavirus pandemic, dive deep into DataBird as an internet ecosystem builder in Bangladesh, DataBird’s strategy and the state of operation, and DataBird’s ambition going forward.
Kashef is an original thinker and first principles oriented founder and this was an intellectually empowering conversation. We hope you enjoy reading the interview as much as we enjoyed doing it!
