Small and medium-level entrepreneurship has gone to the next level following the cost-effective and easy to avail mobile financial service in Bangladesh.
Nagad, the mobile financial wing of Bangladesh Post Office, has pioneered this new wave of entrepreneurship across the country.
Many entrepreneurs have now become self-sufficient with the innovative solutions provided by Nagad, and most importantly, empowered with the lowest transaction costs.
The Nagad innovation to open an MFS account just by dialling *167# and lowest transaction costs made Nagad highly popular in a short time and the people involved in Nagad business also made a fortune.
Karim Uddin, a small businessman from Moheshkhali, Cox's Bazar, is one of the many examples of such tales.
Karim, who owned a makeshift shop in the local market now has his own farm to grow betel leaf.
"I was struggling with my livelihood as I have a large family to feed. I started business as a Nagad entrepreneur in 2017. Within a short span of time, the Nagad service gains huge popularity mainly because of its low cost of transaction," Karim said.
'For any businessman, lowering the cost is very important to ensure profitability. Nagad has provided with that opportunity. Earlier any local businessman had to pay BDT 20 for a transaction value of BDT 1,000 which is now half because of Nagad. In our local market betel leaf business is huge and everyday transactions worth several lakh taka are done. Imagine how much cost effective it became when you can save half of the transaction cost," he explained.
Karim saved from the commission he received from Nagad transaction and now has bought a piece of betel leaf farm land to scale up his business.
Purnima Mandal, another Nagad entrepreneur from Bagerhat, Khulna, has also witnessed a similar rise through Nagad business.
"My husband earlier was involved with another mobile financial service business but because of lack of management he ended up with huge debt. Then after hearing about Nagad and its facilities, I decided to run Nagad business which finally made all the differences," she said.
According to Purnima, the people of the locality are low income people who are in the fish business and workers from a nearby power plant.
"For these customers, saving around BDT 8 in every Tk 1,000 worth of transaction is huge. So people started to use Nagad more and more which helped me scale up my business. Also, Nagad officials here always provided me with any support needed considering it important to empower a woman entrepreneur,' she said.
Currently, Nagad has 52 million (5.20 crore) customers and on average Tk 7.0 billion (700 crore) is transacted through the platform every day.
