Bangladesh needs to rebrand itself to attract more investors

“Bangladesh is not as well-known as it should be,” said Hussain Elius, CEO of Bangladeshi super app Pathao.

With 170 million people, Bangladesh is the eighth-most populous country in the world. Moreover, it is set to surpass India in terms of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund.

Speaking at Tech in Asia Conference 2020, Elius shared how attractive the Bangladesh market could be for investors.

Opportunities and challenges

According to Elius, investors can get a steeper discount due to a lack of competition from international players and local sectors in Bangladesh. But while there are a lot of startups in the country, it is “still the underdog” compared to other markets. As a result, the dollar value of an investment would go further over there, and the margin of error that investors can make is lower.

See also: Could Bangladesh be the next Indonesia?

Additionally, Bangladesh doesn’t just have the local talent, but it now has government support as well with the launch of a fund to support startups.

“If given the opportunity, I do think that talent over here can rise up and take on new challenges,” he noted.

But as a homegrown entrepreneur, Elius finds that there’s still room for improvement. For instance, he thinks that government hasn’t done a good job of marketing Bangladesh as an investment destination. “Every time I meet an investor, […] I have to explain the Bangladesh [market] to people.” This also makes it more difficult to raise money from investors as startups have to spend 20 to 30 minutes to point out the country’s potential.

Meanwhile, local talent is still underdeveloped. There aren’t a lot of people who understand matters like data science and machine learning or know how to build scalable tech startups.

“The problem is less severe now in 2020 than it was in 2015, but it’s still there,” he said.

Surviving the pandemic

Launched in 2015, Pathao started as an on-demand services platform and later rolled out services such as ecommerce, two-wheeler ride-sharing, food delivery, grocery delivery, streaming, gaming, among others.

It currently has over 6 million registered users and offers 12 kinds of services, according to Elius.

As businesses around world began to feel the impact of Covid-19, Pathao started to take action in February, before Bangladesh went into a national lockdown.