Minhaz Anwar, Chief StoryTeller at BetterStories Asia and Director of the Founder Institute in Bangladesh recently won an award from the Junior Chamber International for being one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of Bangladesh (JCI TOYP). He was recognized for his significant contributions in growing Bangladesh’s startup scene.
In an interview with Zishan Mahmood (published in Hifi Public), he provides a deeper insight into growing a startup system in an emerging economy.
It was very frustrating to see Bangladesh constantly being portrayed as a country of dire poverty, disasters and dysfunctional politics. I have always believed that the priorities of this country should be set by ourselves and of course, there is a lot more to Bangladesh. Our country has made remarkable progress on women empowerment, led the way on social innovation and became a huge success example on human development indicators."
Anwar also talked about the challenges facing the startup ecosystem in Bangladesh.
"Startup still being a new phenomenon there are a multitude of challenges, and the first obstacle starts at home. The concept of startups is still not widely understood and a lot of the difficulties result from this lack of empathy. Women even do not start – particularly when it comes to a non-traditional startup idea such as technology or technology enabled one.
People are more willing to remain within the comfort zones and encouraged by friends, family and society in general to put in the effort in a safe, secure job at some reputed local firm or MNC instead of looking to solve a problem of our time. This is aggravated by the discrimination and corruption startup founders would have to face while setting their businesses up or doing the businesses in Bangladesh.
Some of us also believe in instant gratification which cause them to fail. In general, I believe we do need to have more mentors and angels coming to the ecosystem, passing on the wisdom and experience on one hand and on the other, advocating for better and more startup-friendly policies in Bangladesh."
Despite the challenges, Minhaz is optimistic about Bangladesh.
I am working on a new project called TekShoI- a portmanteau of technology and social innovation and also a play on the Bangla term ‘tekshoi’ which means sustainable. We have now signed a partnership with British Council on this and they mediated a partnership between Bethnal Green Ventures– a UK based accelerator program and BetterStories to design this Y-Combinator style seed accelerator program Bangladesh. Once established we hope TekShoI will attract talents from all over the world to build global-scale, mission-driven and technology-enabled social innovation startups."
If you would like to build a startup in Bangladesh, the Dhaka Founder Institute is currently accepting applications.
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