Startups looking to start off on the right foot often turn to a startup accelerator for help. In Bangladesh, the concept of accelerator was unheard of even just one and half years ago.
Accelerators offer new entrepreneurs good opportunities early on. Founders get help to quickly grow their business and they often better their chances of attracting a top Venture Capitalist firm to invest in their startup at a later point.
Thanks to Grameenphone (GP), the largest mobile operator of the country and SD Asia, a specialized news website focusing on startup news in the South Asia region, startup accelerator now finds a string footing under their patronization.
GP, in partnership with SD Asia had launched its startup accelerator program in October 2015. With the successful Tk 11 lakh in seed funding, work spaces in GP House, and a weighty set of industry contacts to speed up the life cycle of their businesses.
During the Demo Day, the new startups which are nurtured under the accelerator program provide a presentation in front of an audience comprised of mentors
and potential investors.
Under the GP Accelerator program, each of the selected startups are provided with and more self-reliant, eventually sustaining
faster growth through their own efforts.
The five startups of the second batch of GP Accelerator program – BuzzAlly, Socian, Cramstack, Ghuri, and This fixed-term, cohort-based program allows the ventures to become stronger Power, Energy and Mineral Resources was present at the occasion as the chief guest.
Expressing his excitement with the program and GP’s role in nurturing new start-ups, the ICT State Minister CMED – presented their business ideas on that Demo Day in front of more than 100 attendees, including local and foreign investors, professionals, and senior officials from GP and SD Asia.
Junaid Ahmed Palak, State Minister for graduates have presented. I welcome the leadership being provided by the corporations like Grameenphone.”
This fixed-term, cohort-based program allows the ventures to become stronger and more self-reliant, eventually sustaining faster growth through their own efforts.
Congratulating the five start-ups, SD Asia and GP for the hard work, the state minister said that he hoped to see more examples of such “continued collaboration”.
Petter B. Furberg, CEO of GP said that he was very pleased with the progress the startups have shown in such a short time, “As a market leader in the digital space in Bangladesh, we will continue to play an enabling role to boost the start-up eco-system in the country,” he said.
Kazi Mahboob Hossain, Head of Transformation at GP, said “It takes an eco-system to raise a startup and we are grateful to a host of partners, mentors, GP colleagues and the startup community as a whole for the huge support to the GP Accelerator Program.
Minhaz Anwar, Head of GP Accelerator, said that “the ambition for GP Accelerator is to ultimately help create 50 scalable global businesses from Bangladesh by 2021 and help few of them to be on track to become Bangladesh’s first set of unicorns”.
Speaking on the Demo Day, Mustafizur Rahman, Founder CEO of SD Asia said, “In the last one year, the program went from zero to sixty by applying enormous amount of time. The program helps the new entrepreneurs to build their business from zero to a successful one. These are the kinds of stories we want to help make to inspire millions in Bangladesh.”
