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FS Weekly 79:  5-year Journey of iFarmer, A Brief History of ACI, Two New Deals, Effective Meeting, and Rokomari ebook

Hi there: I'm Ruhul and this is Future Startup Weekly, a newsletter about entrepreneurship, expertise, and doing good work. Please let us know if you enjoy the newsletter and have any feedback for us to improve. You can read past issues here and subscribe here.

This week’s edition features: 

  • A reflection from iFarmer CEO Fahad Ifaz on the 5-year Journey of iFarmer 
  • Interactive Cares gets into Accelerating Asia 
  • A Brief History of ACI
  • Effective team meeting habits 
  • Druto Fintech raises $125k in new funding 
  • Rokomari launches ebook

An Announcement. Our popular workshop Product Management for Non-Technical People (PMNP) has returned for a second run. PMNP is an exclusive 2-hour workshop on Product Management for non-technical people. We’re hosting the second edition on 23 December 2023, which will be conducted by Khondoker Mashuk, Sr. Vice President, Product, and Business Intelligence, GoZayaan. Registratuions are open. You can learn more and register here.

On to the updates. 


I don’t have a reflection to share today per se. Instead, I’m sharing a few of my favorite quotes from Will and Ariel Durant’s classic The Lessons of History, which I’m currently re-reading. 

The lessons of history by will and ariel durant

“Society is founded not on the ideals but on the nature of man,”

“A knowledge of history may teach us that civilization is a co-operative product, that nearly all peoples have contributed to it; it is our common heritage and debt; and the civilized soul will reveal itself in treating every man or woman, however lowly, as a representative of one of these creative and contributory groups.”

“No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.”

“By and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them.”

“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.” 

“Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.”

“Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically”

“He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much grief.”

“History is so indifferently rich that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.”

“In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.”

“Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.”

“It is not the race that makes the civilization, it is the civilization that makes the people: circumstances geographical, economic, and political create a culture, and the culture creates a human type.”

“We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities.”

“The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it—perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts.”

“Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation”


What We’ve Published Last Week 

1. The 5-year Journey of iFarmer: Imagining the Future of Farming in Bangladesh

iFarmer Co-founder and CEO Fahad Ifaz reflects on iFarmer's journey, highlighting a mission-critical approach that sustained the company through ups and downs, and shares his entrepreneurial lessons from building in Bangladesh's crucial yet underrated agricultural sector on the eve of iFarmer's 5th anniversary.

2. Interactive Cares Raises Investment From Accelerating Asia

Interactive Cares, the Dhaka-based ed-tech startup focused on creating employability for millions of youths in Bangladesh,  announced that it has been selected for the 9th Cohort of Accelerating Asia's flagship accelerator program. As part of the program, Accelerating Asia participates in Interactive Cares' ongoing seed round, investing $100,000 in the company, with the potential for follow-on funding of up to $250,000.

3. A Brief History of ACI 

A history of one of the most important local conglomerates in Bangladesh—its origin and journey to where it is today. 

4. 07 Habits of Effective Team Meetings 

While productive meetings are concise and focused, delivering essential information without unnecessarily consuming valuable employee time, an ineffective team meeting squanders productive hours. A successful meeting is characterized by a clear objective, rather than a routine gathering for general updates.

5. Fintech Startup Drutoloan Raises $1,25,000 in Pre-Seed Round to Revolutionize MSME Financing in Bangladesh

6. Partner Content: Rokomari Launches eBook, Sees Phenomenal Growth 

Rokomari, the country's largest book-focused e-commerce company, has launched an e-book app/platform integrated into its existing app and website. Customers can now buy, download, and read e-books using the Rokomari app and website. As soon as an e-book is purchased online, it will be downloaded to the e-book library of your account. You can then access it anytime, from anywhere. The company says it already has a collection of over 7,000 e-books in its library, which is growing daily.

Learn more about our partner program here


That's all for this week.

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Thank you for reading.

Ruhul

On behalf of Team FS

Mohammad Ruhul Kader is a Dhaka-based entrepreneur and writer. He founded Future Startup, a digital publication covering the startup and technology scene in Dhaka with an ambition to transform Bangladesh through entrepreneurship and innovation. He writes about internet business, strategy, technology, and society. He is the author of Rethinking Failure. His writings have been published in almost all major national dailies in Bangladesh including DT, FE, etc. Prior to FS, he worked for a local conglomerate where he helped start a social enterprise. Ruhul is a 2022 winner of Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He can be reached at ruhul@futurestartup.com

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