Throughout the world, the revolutions caused by disruptive technology and its ubiquitous applications are easily noticeable. Strong applications of the 'gig economy' model are no more confined to the first world countries and are already affecting the regular lives of people in Bangladesh. To encourage young entrepreneurs to initiate and engage in the process of creating such strong platforms, Entrepreneurship Development Club (EDC) of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) is working to stay in tune with their motto 'Inspire. Innovate. Connect'.
Intending to nurture the seed of entrepreneurship and self-employment, EDC has launched its flagship event business competition for the third time titled 'Pioneros 3.0'. This time this business competition is no more an intra-university event; students have signed up for the competition from all over the country.
As many as 350 teams have registered for the competition representing 47 universities. The competition is divided into three rounds. On January 12, 2019 a workshop was arranged in BUET Auditorium. Almost 800 people attended that workshop in order to learn about the rules of the competition and get valuable insights from the respected speakers. Bijon Islam, CEO and founder of LightCastle Partners and Zafir Shafiee, founder of Bondstein Technologies Limited shared their first-hand entrepreneurial experiences. They explained from their real-life observations the challenges one may face, and most importantly, the tools and techniques one must possess and be efficient in utilising to survive the highs and lows of their highly uncertain journeys.
Bijon Islam talked about how he quit a high paying job abroad in order to build his own startup. He emphasised having a team with good synergy who can overcome all the hardships together. To talk about his initial hardships, he said, 'I did not have enough budget to pay for my customers' lunch. So I held our meetings at home so that my mother could cook for them'. In order to mention the effectiveness of technology to change our work process, he cited their example of how they got 2,000 responses through a one-hour survey. LightCastle team gave Tk 100 to each of the respondents of the survey just for sending pictures of their refrigerators. The study opened their eyes about how precisely data can be collected at this speed which would be hardly possible in traditional ways.
The second speaker Zafir Shafiee talked about how to make an elevator pitch stand out to the judges or investors. To engage with the audience, he started with a small survey on Kahoot! and the audience participated in that survey through their phones and interacted with him. Mr. Shafiee told about the common mistakes students generally do with their presentations and business models and the ways those can be avoided. He mentioned how a business model is supposed to be pitched as a complete story that rounds up well. The story has to convey the core proposition to the investors by eliminating all unnecessary noises. He emphasised the importance of focusing on both the financials and functionalities to ensure the sustainability of the business model.
The Q&A session was particularly significant since, in this part, the participants asked their queries and sought solutions to the problems they were facing or had faced themselves in the past.
Shabnam Sharmin Swarnali, a participant from the audience, exclaimed, "I always read successful startup stories from across the world, but I never realised so many people of my generation are so much invested in this as well. Through today's experience, we learnt the practical steps that are required to materialise our ideas. The insights we acquired from both the speeches and the Q&A session on how to start a business, how to maintain and sustain the business, how to market and how to innovate were remarkable."
Crafting a business model from the scratch and perfecting its details is difficult. However, it is just the start. The challenges of getting investors, users, and developers start next and it is a never-ending process. To quote Yanur Islam Piash, the president of EDC, "I hope our endeavours will inspire young entrepreneurs to put their talents and efforts to ease our daily life difficulties and create more employment opportunities. Now is the time to join the revolution."
The writer is a second-year student of BBA programme at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka. He can be reached at [email protected]
