In 2024, we published 184 articles across our 8 major categories. We started 2024 at a slow pace, as I was on leave from January to April/May. When I returned to work after April, it took me a while to get up to speed. My initial assumption was that the year would be challenging regarding business. However, in the end, things turned out quite well.
We made several major changes. We renamed our "Face to Face" interview series to "The Art of Enterprise." We introduced a new interview series called "The Generalist." We introduced a new content series called "Business Deep Dive" with the ambition to publish long-form and in-depth profiles of companies. We also relaunched our case library and published several interesting cases.
We launched Future Research in 2023. Our research work picked up in 2024. We worked with several universities, a UN agency, and a few private sector companies. We published several whitepapers and are in the process of publishing another one this week.
Our content marketing service has evolved into a more comprehensive narrative-building service. We sent the 100th edition of our FS Weekly email newsletter towards the end of December.
All in all, 2024 was a good year for Future Startup. We have taken several new initiatives that we hope to double down on this year. We see an excellent opportunity to expand our work and impact in 2025, and we are super excited about that.
We take our responsibility to study and write about Bangladesh's entrepreneurship, business, and technology scene seriously. I can say that we aim to take this responsibility even more seriously in 2025.
Now let's revisit the highlights of the year.
These were some of the most popular articles we published in 2024. The list is not organized in any particular order.
Market capitalization is one of the simplest measures to determine the value of a company. It is one measure of a company’s worth as determined by the stock market. It is calculated by multiplying the company’s outstanding shares by its current share price.
There are criticisms and critical views about the Bangladesh stock market. The stock market remains highly underdeveloped. Industry insiders suggest the market doesn’t have enough truly high-value companies and the regulatory and policy structure inhibits the development of the market. Many stories about the stock market in Dhaka are rather negative stories of market manipulation and other market failures.
Despite these limitations, going public remains a coveted ambition for most companies and the market still features some of the most stellar companies in Bangladesh. Without understanding these companies, it is impossible to understand the Bangladesh business landscape.
In the table below, we present a chart that lists Bangladesh’s top 50 publicly-traded companies by market cap, using data as of September 7, 2024.
We believe these companies offer a glimpse into the broader business scene of Bangladesh. For instance, a significant percentage of companies in the list come from the energy, finance, telecom, and consumer goods sectors. And there are no internet technology companies, consumer or B2B in the list. These data points tell a certain story about the market.
We are living through the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). At least for now, the world of tech is predominantly about AI. Look at any field, everyone has something to say and do about AI. This has transformed the venture-building landscape across markets and verticals. Every company wants to be an AI company.
This surge of interest in AI has also monopolized the overall funding landscape, with AI companies absorbing a significant share of overall capital deployed across verticals anywhere in the world. In the first half of 2024 alone, more than AI startups raised more than $35.5 billion in investment globally, per Crunchbase.
The growing investor interest and market demand and a rapidly developing field have also created an environment where we are seeing a significant rise in the number of fascinating and sometimes groundbreaking AI companies in different verticals.
In this article, we take a look into some of the most fascinating AI companies in the world today.
The speed of development in the sector makes maintaining a meaningful understanding of the sector a challenge. One shortcut we found to understand any sector is starting with learning about the key players in that sector. To that end, preparing this list was an attempt on our part to develop a sense of what’s happening in AI today. We hope it will also help you get a sense of the development in the sector.
What do you need to know before embarking on a startup journey? This is a good question to think about if you are interested in startups and entrepreneurship. I think there are two aspects that you can spend time learning about building companies:
1) what is common among successful companies and founders and 2) what is the hardest part of running a startup. Most other knowledge is either contextual or you don’t need to learn now.
1. What is common among successful companies and founders across verticals and markets: in simple, they are good at what they do. They work on problems and build products for which there is a need in the market. In summary, they understand the problem they are dealing with. They spend time learning about the product, customers, and the market.
2. Next, what is the hardest part about running a company: almost everything. There is no easy part to running a business. But you don’t need to learn all of it before starting your journey. In fact, you can’t learn about operational intricacies unless you get into the game. What you can and should learn, however, is the commitment, perseverance, and psychological strength you need to run a company.
Fashion is an enduring passion we can't help but embrace. As the digital era advances, fashion has made its way onto our mobile devices, computers, and tablets, previously exclusively found in physical retail stores and shopping centers.
Nowadays, we can conveniently purchase our favorite shirts, t-shirts, jeans, pants, shoes, and more through user-friendly eCommerce websites and apps. These platforms offer a wide range of products in various categories and ensure doorstep delivery at affordable rates.
SHEIN, often stylized in all caps as "SHEIN," is a globally renowned and highly influential B2C e-commerce platform that has redefined the landscape of fashion retail. Founded in China in 2008, SHEIN offers top-notch fashion items, encompassing women's and men's attire, kids' clothing, stylish accessories, and various trendy products and embellishments.
SHEIN has rapidly evolved from a small domestic retailer into a dominant force in the world of online fashion. With its emphasis on affordable yet stylish clothing and accessories, SHEIN has captured the attention of fashion-forward individuals worldwide.
Square Pharmaceuticals, the Bangladeshi multinational pharmaceuticals company, is one of the best-run companies in Bangladesh. It is the largest pharmaceutical company in the country, holding the top position since 1985—an incredible feat for any company to maintain a top position in any sector for such a long time. It is one of Bangladesh's top 50 most valuable publicly traded companies. The company holds a market capitalization of approximately BDT 199.10 billion as of October 2024.
The journey of Square began when Samson H. Chowdhury, late Founder of Square Group, returned to East Pakistan after his education in India and made his home in Ataikula village in Pabna, where his father served as a Medical Officer in an outdoor dispensary. Around 1952, he started a small pharmacy in Ataikula village. In 1958, he and three of his friends launched a pharmaceutical company. Square was born.
The newly formed company began operations with a modest workforce of 12 employees in a 3,000 sq. ft. facility. Square Pharmaceutical entered the export market in 1987. It was the first Bangladeshi pharmaceutical company to export medicines. Over the years, the company has significantly expanded its reach. Today, Square Pharma exports to more than 45 countries across Asia, Africa, America, and Australia.
Agriculture is an important pillar in Bangladesh's socio-economic story. Despite the gradual rise of industrialization and the service sector over the past decades, the sector remains a dominant force in the country's economy.
In 2021-22, agriculture contributed 11.66% to the nation's total GDP. In 2022, the sector employed 45.3% of the total workforce in the country. It supplies raw materials and provides backward linkages to a long list of industries. Agriculture makes village economies work across Bangladesh.
Despite its outsized importance, major challenges the agriculture sector faces have intensified over the past few decades, such as productivity, access to finance, market, and information, wastage across the value chain, lack of technology adoption, etc. Exodus of human capital from the sector due to the changing economic landscape has exacerbated these challenges. Declining arable land and natural resources have added to that challenge.
A small number of agritech startups are seeking to develop solutions in response to these challenges in the sector. These companies are introducing financial and insurance solutions for farmers, efficient input and output market linkages, information services, precision agriculture, and a host of other solutions.
Fahad is a serial entrepreneur with a portfolio of fascinating successful ventures, including CoSpace (co-working spaces), GRID (a modern furniture company), Movians (a video production studio), and several other ventures.
Fahad has been in this business of entrepreneurship for a very long time and has a rare story of multiple failures and successes. He has seen all sides of venture building in Bangladesh. He started his entrepreneurial journey right after college, started multiple companies, failed at multiple companies, and then built a brilliant group of successful companies. Our conversation covers:
Fahad's candid reflections on failures and triumphs provide invaluable lessons for aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs alike. This interview is a must-read for anyone seeking inspiration, practical advice, and a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial journey.
In this conversation, Hasnaeen shares a raw and honest account of his path, including the challenges of starting a tech company in Bangladesh, his decision to leave his studies in Sweden to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams, navigating the early challenges of entrepreneurship, and his candid reflections on the mistakes and lessons learned along the way. We discuss his upbringing, his early passion for chess and reading, and how his interest in computers led him to become a self-taught programmer. He shares stories of his early entrepreneurial ventures, the founding of Astha IT, and maintaining a long-term vision while dealing with immediate obstacles.
The interview also explores his thoughts on building a company culture focused on technical excellence and employee empowerment, overcoming challenges, and his belief in the importance of playing one's role in the grand scheme of life. His perspective on finding purpose beyond business success and his ambitious vision to build a billion-dollar global brand from Bangladesh makes this a compelling story of determination and strategic thinking.
In this fascinating conversation, we talk about his journey to what he is doing today, including his upbringing and personal history, the lessons he has learned from his parents, and his first foray into entrepreneurship as a college student in Dhaka. We explore his early entrepreneurial success, his winding path to what he is doing today, and the secret of building successful companies. We discuss the history and the current state of his first venture ARcom. We talk about WPDeveloper, a fast-growing globally renowned WordPress products company, its evolution, the secret behind its success, and its ambition going forward. We also reflect on the lessons he has gathered from his journey so far, what makes life worthwhile, and much more.
The traditional education system, with its emphasis on rote memorization, faces mounting criticism for failing to prepare children for an uncertain future. A 2016 World Bank report highlighted this challenge, noting that children entering school that year would graduate into a job market where many positions didn't yet exist.
More importantly, a growing base of research indicates that the secret of how our life turns out lies in the shape and experiences of our childhood. The seeds of what we eventually become in life can almost always be traced back to our early years. These findings have created an urgency to put greater importance on early childhood development. Consequently, a growing number of parents today are wary about the early development of their children. There is an increasing demand for children's education initiatives that understand and incorporate early childhood development psychology in their programs.
This reality underpins the founding thesis of Kids Time, a creative learning institution in Bangladesh that focuses on cultivating children's creativity and problem-solving skills through interactive and engaging education approaches. Owned by Dhaka-based education conglomerate Light of Hope, the organization has quietly built one of the most popular creative after-school brands in Bangladesh.
In this exclusive interview, Waliullah pulls back the curtain on LoH's journey from its early days as a scrappy startup to its current status as an education conglomerate with interconnected ventures like Goofi, Kids Time, ToguMogu, and Teachers Time. We talk about the challenges of building a company in an ambiguous market, the importance of culture and talent, the strategic rationale behind LoH's unique conglomerate structure, and ideas for building a truly enduring company.
As you read on, you'll learn:
Some of the best companies today have a common cultural character: they almost all have a culture of writing as a primary mode of communication, presenting ideas, and collaboration. They put everything in writing. You want to present an idea, come up with a written document, and present it. You want to launch a new product, write a demo press release first. You want to hire, write down a detailed job description first and then go, hire.
I think this is not by accident but by design. And using writing as a core component of how you communicate and operate as a company has a ton of upsides.
There are many companies that are well-known for their writing-heavy cultures. Amazon comes to mind. The company is famous for its Amazon FAQ. Stripe comes to mind. Basecamp comes to mind.
Google, Facebook, and many other tech giants can be put into this group of companies. And it is fascinating to see how these companies have actively tried to reinforce writing things down as a key ingredient of their culture.
I have been thinking about why this is the case. A couple of reasons come to mind.
In this interview with Alvi and Ayaz, we discuss the genesis of the company, how the platform works, the challenges they faced in developing a trusted platform, and their future vision for Jomee Jomaa. You'll learn:
Whether you're an investor curious about new opportunities, an entrepreneur looking for inspiration, or simply interested in how technology is reshaping traditional markets, this conversation offers a fascinating glimpse into the future of real estate investment in Bangladesh.
Renata Limited is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in Bangladesh. It is not the largest player in the sector but enjoys a market reputation that is uncommon for Bangladeshi companies. The company is known for its high-integrity culture, focus on continuous innovation and operational efficiency, and commitment to social responsibility evident in its unique ownership structure.
Renata’s roots trace back to Pfizer Laboratories (Bangladesh), launched in Bangladesh in 1972. The company had an excellent run in its early years. However, owing to the regulatory and other changes, the company started to face significant business challenges in the 1990s. In 1993, Pfizer made the strategic decision to divest the Bangladesh operation and transfer the ownership of its Bangladesh operation to local investors. That’s how Renata Limited was born—the new owners of Pfizer Bangladesh rebranded the company to Renata.
The initial years of Renata were difficult. It inherited a struggling business. The new leadership had the mammoth task of turning the business around. Syed Humayun Kabir, who became the Founder Chairman of the company, implemented a series of consequential strategic decisions that eventually led to the turning around of the business. He cut costs aggressively and let many employees go by offering them special packages. The money saved in the process was then invested into product development and marketing.
After several years of disciplined operation, the turnaround happened in 1998. Renata has since transformed into a major pharmaceutical player in both domestic and international markets. It is the fourth-largest pharmaceutical company in Bangladesh and has led the market for animal health products for more than two and a half decades. Renata is listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange and has a market value exceeding USD 1 billion.
In 2015, Bdjobs, Bangladesh's leading online job portal, made a strategic decision that would shape the future of the country's employment landscape. Having successfully digitized the white-collar job market over the previous decade, the company set its sights on a new frontier: the vast and largely untapped blue-collar and specialized jobs sector.
The informal job market in Bangladesh, which includes blue-collar and many specialized skills positions, forms the backbone of the country's economy. Yet, it had remained stubbornly analog, relying on word-of-mouth, local brokers, and factory gate hiring practices, limiting opportunities for job seekers while causing inefficiency and increasing costs for employers in this sector.
Bdjobs' foray into this space is a story of market creation, technological adaptation, and persistent education of both employers and job seekers. It's a tale that mirrors the company's earlier success in the white-collar sector but with challenges unique to the informal economy.
Overall, I see a hopeful future for the Bangladesh startup scene. The new golden age might not arrive tomorrow, or next month, or even next year. Our second unicorn may be a few years away. We may become a unique ecosystem unlike any other where million-dollar funding will remain as sporadic as today. But that will not limit the number of high-quality and fascinating companies. If I take a long enough time horizon, the trends are encouraging.
It’s hard to kill the entrepreneurial nature of a people.
Dhaka-based agritech startup iFarmer originally started as an Uber for urban farming. After launching the service, iFarmer founders quickly realized that it wouldn’t work. The idea didn’t take long to fail. Six months in, iFarmer pivoted to launching a financial solution for farmers that would set the company on a different trajectory. This has been the case with a long list of today's most successful companies.
Companies such as Pathao, iFarmer, ShopUp, and many others started as completely different things than what they are today.
Every idea goes through a life cycle and evolves, which we often overlook when we start. The world of entrepreneurship is littered with examples where the founders originally began with one idea, found out that it wouldn’t work, and evolved into something entirely different. When you take an idea to the market, it must evolve and change.
Simply put, Templately is a solution that allows you to make your website without going to an agency or web developer. You can call it a one-stop solution for creating and designing websites. Using Templately, you can create a website in 5-10 minutes. The platform has a wide range of templates and designs, choose the one you like, make a few clicks and you have your WordPress website. No technical skills necessary.
The platform offers two options: free and paid. While the paid tier comes with added benefits, the company says its free tier has ample templates and designs that should be sufficient for most people. A majority of its over 3.5 lakh users are free users.
Fahad Ifaz, co-founder and CEO of iFarmer, sat in his office in August 2018, pondering the future of his startup. Six months ago, he and his co-founder Jamil Akbar launched iFarmer as an "Uber for Urban Farming," allowing city dwellers to lease their rooftops for vertical farming. Despite their efforts, the model wasn't gaining traction. Ifaz knew they needed to change, but the question was: what direction should they take and how could they make the new idea work?
In this second and final installment of our interview with Ayman, we talked about the operational mechanics of 10 Minute School, how 10 Minute School functions as an organization, its culture, leadership, ambition of 10 Minute School, the future of edtech in Bangladesh, the upsides and burdens of fame, doing good work, what it takes to build a lasting organization, Ayman's production function, life lessons and much more.
Pathao has gone through various strategic changes since 2020. The company saw a major restructuring in its leadership in 2021 and has since made several significant business and management changes. For the past two years, it followed a quiet execution approach, focusing on streamlining its operation, achieving sustainability, etc., and mostly stayed away from the limelight. With the new investment, the company indicates a different stage of its operation.
We discuss a wide-range of topics including (but not limited to) his personal journey to what he is doing, how his upbringing and early life experiences have shaped him, the creation of MBI Deep Dives, what it means to be internally driven, the critical importance of high pain tolerance for entrepreneurs and creatives, we delve into the power of the internet, the rise of the pseudonymous economy, the impact of the social media platforms, the state of internet culture in Bangladesh, and what it takes to build a vibrant entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem, we go deep into his approach to writing and running MBI Deep Dives, the state of the newsletter, and his ambition for its future, the upsides and challenges of working solo, his approach to work and productivity, and the future of the media business and we reflect on the nature of conviction and belongingness, the importance of finding and following your interests, his favorite podcasts, and the importance of finding joy in your work and much more.
“Finish what you start” sounds more like an admonition to many of us. We all, at least some of the time, are guilty of not finishing a project, an assignment, or a task on time despite our best intentions. Whereas to finish is quite simple: start > sit with the task and grind > Finish > Go back to step one.
Broadly, we face two challenges. One, starting. Often starting something is not easy. If it is an important endeavor, it is more so. Fear and lethargy, our two primal enemies, make starting anything difficult. Fear says you can’t do it. It is hard. You will fail. You will embarrass yourself. So on and so forth. Lethargy doesn't go there. It simply cajoles. You are tired, sleep a little more today. You look weak, you should rest more often. Stay a little longer under this comfy blanket.
These two seducers make it difficult for us to start. Starting appears to be an act beyond us. To that end, starting something of value is an act of will. You have to be willing to fail, be embarrassed, and embrace hard work.
The second challenge is finishing. While many of us eventually manage to get over our inertia to start, we tend to give up in the middle. Finishing remains a far more difficult art to master. And then eventually we give up. Fear and lethargy, our two primal enemies, are equally active in this realm as well. We procrastinate. We delay. We leave things half-done.
In this fascinating conversation, Jafar Tuhin, founder of Taabu Tour and Tabbu Ekduaria Village Homestay, shares his journey from city life to pioneering sustainable village tourism in Bangladesh. Tuhin's journey is a compelling story of following one's passion, embracing slow living, and creating meaningful experiences for travelers.
What you will learn:
Tuhin offers valuable insights for travel enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in sustainable development or alternative lifestyles. He challenges conventional notions of success and progress, inviting us to reconsider our relationship with nature, community, and personal fulfillment.
