I’ve been following the trends in the Bangladeshi Startup culture via social media and sites like SD Asia and so on. In my following, few years ago, Freelancing individuals used to operate as a team and got most of their tasks as a contract from the foreign providers via platforms like Odesk(now Upwork), elance, freelancer and so on. There are still lot of people out their who takes and does work from upwork and making a decent and happy living. The scene started to change a little bit since 3-4 years years ago and I’ve found a list of startups from ‘Founded in’ who truly have products of their own and they are mostly focusing local customers based in Bangladesh. I see that as a step forward made possible by the new and young techpreneurs of Bangladesh. Some of them have got fame and media coverage but most of them are not making good enough money even though they’ve amazing services and products.
If you look back at the very small history of Bangladesh in IT industries, we grew up using or downloading pirated software and copied digital contents and still are doing it. A whole generation have passed the message to the next generation that, we are not going to pay for digital downloads, softwares or any kind of services unless we must. its going to be very hard to sell softwares as services to this generation and the next. To avoid the risk of being a failed srartup, its best for the entrepreneurs to redesign their product to serve the global consumer as most of the tech services can be provided globally. There are markets for subscription based services and secured online payments are there to cash you back. Indian tech startups has got this very clear message across the board long ago and some of the Indian companies are already selling their services abroad. We use Freshdesk as the customer support ticketing system in our office which is a SAS mostly provided and operated from India.
Is it really hard to hit the global Market?
Bangladeshi professionals from New York, California, Sydney and London have been waiting to see some initiatives from the Bangladeshi startups and the response have not been good enough so far. Some of the very risk prone entrepreneurial Non resident Bangladeshis have come back to their homeland to take few businesses globally and they are undoubtedly the heroes of Bangladeshi startup scene. Depending on the service, if its not very much localized; it has never been easier than now to go global. All you need to do is to be found! that’s it...When business and individuals search for services online, all they look for is local pricing and local contact numbers. Nobody check and judge a SAS service by the provider country. Once you’ve optimized your site targeting the western world, you need to localize your site more and more. It could be through UX, could be through supporting customers in English during Local time. You can pay for customer’s local numbers and those calls will be transferred to you. Only Skype won’t give you enough exposure. If you can think of foreign business subsidiaries and hire people, that will also bring you new customers.
Some products need to be optimized locally based on their culture, weather condition and using of colloquial language is highly required specially in the content marketing industry. Hire people who are enthusiastic about foreign cultures; who not only listen to kanye west but also knows why people drive on the right hand side in USA. If you’re still trying to figure out what you’re missing from your business by not going global yet is; simply the profit you could make from actual sales to millions of legitimate customers.
kickmystartup.com is an initiative to find opportunities for Bangladeshi tech businesses around the globe and help them grow. If you already have a business and want to go global, be in touch.
