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Hi there,
Some time ago, I spent a vacation quarantined in a sleepy hamlet in South India due to a bout of chickenpox. It wasn’t a bad case, but I didn’t see it that way when my cousins went swimming in the rivulet nearby without me every day that summer.
With little to do, I’d watch people go past our house. The big mustached man who cycled up and down several times a day became an adventurer in my head, rescuing puppies from overflowing paddy fields. Imagine the disappointment I felt when I found out that he went on these “adventurous trips” just to restock goods for his family-owned shop.
But here’s the thing: Decades later, mom and pop stores in many parts of the world still face the same problem, with owners making their versions of cycling trips every few days.
Which is why I love stories like the one we have today on Bangladesh’s ShopUp, which provides mobile-based retail services to mudir dokan, the country’s neighborhood mom and pop stores.
It recently raised US$75 million in series B funding from big-name investors like Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Flourish Ventures, and Sequoia Capital India. This is quite an achievement for a startup from Bangladesh, a market that has been overlooked for some time by investors.
Now, with over US$100 million in funding, ShopUp is possibly Bangladesh’s best-funded startup.
This week’s big story by Mike Aquino delves into why ShopUp has the potential to transform a stagnant retail system and do it in a way that’s tailored to local problems.
That approach is hard to beat.
— Nikita
THE BIG STORY
Why Bangladesh’s rising star has big-name VCs hooked
Image credit: Timmy Loen
DEEP READS
TRENDING NEWS
STARTUP WATCH
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