Is your business a corporate netizen yet?

I realised pretty late until today that none of the websites of leading Bangladeshi companies have a website in Bangla language. Do you think why or why not companies should have websites also available in Bangla? Open for debate.

Do our companies still consider Facebook to be a tool to connect with 'friends and family' and not with consumers? Do our companies maintain any 'fan pages' in Facebook and other leading social media websites? Why or why not?

Do our companies have a video strategy in major video sharing websites such as You Tube or Tube Mogul?

Do our companies consider Twitter as the tool to send periodic updates (Tweets) straight to consumers' handsets (of the followers?). What about bdjobs.com sending tweets as job updates to its followers? I note that some intelligent people have already booked the user names of grameenphone, banglalink in Twitter. I hope they are company insiders, hoping to formulate a digital media strategy for their companies in near future.

Do our companies consider maintaining an internal employee blog, CEO blog or a blog where consumers could interact with them directly?

Just putting up a static website has become so obsolete for today. Interaction and individuals are at the core of today's internet based business strategies. The sooner and the quicker companies can leverage internet for their business objectives, the better they can outperform the competition.

What is your special power?

How fond were you (or are you still) of Superman, Batman, Spiderman and all those ultra-cool characters with special powers? What is so unique about them other than the fact that many of them wear loud-colored under-garments inside out, a fashion statement many of us would not dare don in public. Notwithstading the fact that they are all fictituous characters, they all have atleast one unique characteristic which makes them stand apart from other mere mortals. Say Superman could fly and move mountains with his own hands, Spiderman climbs up and down buildings with ease, Batman can hang upside down (!) etc. I wonder though if they have ever applied for jobs in Bangladesh, if they could mention all these extra-curricular and super-natural activities in their CVs or not. Nevertheless, the point to drive home is that all of us must be having atleast one super power which helps us stand apart from the rest and the question is what is that and how do you find that and how do you nurture that?

It is argued that if you cannot describe in one sentence what you do for a living, perhaps you should have a second look at what actually you are doing. When we meet someone in business meetings and events and when we say 'Ami Grameen Phone e achi', or 'Ami BRAC Bank e kaj kori' or 'Ami Square group e director'....the next question that comes to my mind is...'so what?'. What is the big deal if you are in GP, BRAC Bank or any other small or big so called branded companies? Your being there merely does not say much about YOU, what matters perhaps is what your value addition there is, in other words, your superpower. I am sure those 'big' companies must have hired you for that special super power of yours, not merely by your looks, family relations or any other things.

I have met a few 'enlightened' supermen who did actually replied during introductions that ' I am a managing director of a company called XYZ which helps build better houses', or ' I look after peoples happiness and salary at work, I am an HR Manager at ABC'. Other than associating your superpowers with mere designations and job roles, think about what your unique value add is in terms of a general business executive, manager and perhaps mention it in your 'Career Objectives' section in your CV.

After all, not wearing red undies and not being able to see through walls does not mean that you are not a super-hero, you certainly are...its just that nobody knows about it, you haven' t thought about it or you haven't made a super appearance through your CV or your conduct at work. The stage is yours. We are watching.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and SEO Industry in Bangladesh

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? A blurry term for many Bangladeshi businesses. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about optimizing a website for Search Engines like Google to make sure that your site shows up when anyone searches for your important keywords. This doesn’t only mean traffic from search engines; you can also convert the traffic to leads, sales, orders or businesses. e.g. If anyone searched for "Garments Exporters from Bangladesh" in Google and found your site, then there is high probability that the visitor will convert to your customer. Moreover, your website becomes your marketing machine and the impact is worldwide.

Even though, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a much unknown word in the local businesses in Bangladesh. Most of the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) can't understand what SEO can offer and how SEO can help them in their businesses. They are competing in the direct marketing channels that they got used to. Now, they are not willing to switch to SEO as their internet marketing scheme, unless their competitors do.

In my career in International Businesses, I found a trend that small and medium-sized enterprises/businesses (SMEs/SMBs) in Bangladesh always rely on snatching each other’s customers by employing employees from other competing companies that knows a lot of customers or by going up the supply channel. So, the same customer is bouncing around the country’s suppliers.

However, most companies fail to realize Natural & Organic SEO’s potential and communication cost cutting benefit for business leads (orders), which also can create more customers for the country. Due to unawareness of the potential, the SEO industry didn’t grow in Bangladesh for the local companies, which could have been the opposite, since the SMBs/SMEs have low marketing budget.

Back in 2007, I have started SEO for an offshore outsourcing graphic design company. Natural and Organic SEO earned the company many leads. And after 2 years, the company size grew from 3 image manipulators to 50. When I left the company, the company already reached their break-even. And all that happened through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), good sales approach, and service quality.

All of a sudden, all the other competing businesses started to realize the potential of Natural & Organic SEO. Now, the SEO is a buzz around the image manipulation outsourcing businesses. And they already started to create new positions in their marketing team.

However, back in 2006 when I wanted to outsource some SEO job to a local SEO company that had been around for quite a long time. I had a talk with one of their managers, who told me that they do the SEO by putting all the meta tags in place. It was a time when meta tags, hidden texts, and tiny tests were not in practice anymore. However, after talking to them, I understood that they are never close to the current trend in SEO. They are basically, web design firm, not any SEO Agency. Currently after 3 years, they understood that link building was the key element in getting you ranked in Google. So, now they started creating links with scrapped/copied texts from all over the web, when Google’s Duplicate Content Filter is the buzz around the global SEO industry. Anyway, there were good companies like Quantum Cloud that understood the trends and I wonder if Mr. Kundu (I forgot the name) is still there or gone back to Australia.

The Bangladeshi companies had very little demand for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which didn’t create much demand for the industry to grow. However, some eEntrepreneurs grew in Bangladesh who are now growing traffic for their businesses for themselves.

SEO Industry in India was and is very strong as well as costly. This made many US and European businesses to turn to Bangladesh for their Natural & Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Other Internet Marketing needs. Currently, the SEO Industry is surviving and thriving for the demand of the overseas businesses in the US and Europe. And most of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work in the SEO Industry of Bangladesh is done in-house.

Agency-based Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Company is somewhat non-existent in companies that are Bangladeshi owned. However, there are many US-owned Search Marketing Agencies in Bangladesh with in-house SEO experts like Blueliner IT and Superior Internet Solutions. Therefore, Grameen Solutions took the opportunity to become one of the strongest Natural & Organic SEO Agencies in Bangladesh. I hope by 2011, we will see more Bangladeshi SEO Agency coming up to enrich the SEO Industry in Bangladesh.

Author Profile

Asif Anwar is Search Engine Optimization and Marketing (SEO & SEM) specialist working in the Bangladeshi SEO industry since 2003. Currently working as Associate Manager of Web Marketing Solutions in Grameen Solutions.

What's in a name?

There are many companies / brands / products whose names were derived from strange circumstances.

Mercedes
This was actually the financier's daughter's name.


Adobe
This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apple Computers
It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 O'clock.

CISCO
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco.

Compaq
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object.

Corel
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr.Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland REsearch Laboratory.


Google
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders- Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google'

Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.


Hewlett Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.


Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce'but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes)
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapoor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.


Microsoft
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.


Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.


ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.

Sony
It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.


Yahoo!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.­­

Contributed by Tanusree Ghosh

After-thoughts:

1. Do we have an official list of most prominent, popular Bangladeshi brands? If you know, please share the link with us here.

2. We had planned to arrange a 'Bangladesh Corporate Quiz', the idea did not come to light till date. If you see any merit in it, do give it a thought. The plan is to arrange a series of quiz sessions say for a week on leading brands of Bangladesh. Tie it up through SMS answer sending options, promote through popular radio channels etc. The main idea was to ask interested business students, executives trivia questions related to Bangladeshi companies/brands. For example, Who designed the logo of Grameen Phone? Why is PRAN called so? Why our private universities are so fond of direction related namings (North South, South East, East West etc.)? Why our online businesses love to add a 'bd' suffix or prefix in the domain name? Any facts and figures and interesting 'good to know' items about Bangladeshi corporates and the list can go on.

3. One might argue that are our brands strong enough to be deserving such research and limelight, more so on a global ground? The answer is simple, if we don't start 'branding our brands' ourselves, please don't expect foreign gurus and think tanks to do that job for us. They can take us to the water, but what we do then, is solely on us.

I hope you find the origin of the globally renowned brands interesting and funny, I hope we will get to know more interesting facts and trivia about Bangladeshi brands soon.

Bust the Gap in Customer Services

During a romantic date in an August summer in 2008, while relishing a chicken tandoori in a restaurant in Old Airport Dhaka, I discovered a plastic cap of a mineral water bottle inside the chicken. It tasted like….plastic, with a touch of spice and chicken around it. The date was nearly spoilt amidst fear of health concerns and wrong choice of restaurant. I had no clue how to react, I summoned the manager, the waiter responsible, described the case to them, they said ‘sorry’, I said I would complain….I know ‘that person’, I am friends with ‘this person’, a bit of ‘hombi tombi’ you know…that’s pretty much it. The only good thing was, we left without paying, and ofcourse finishing the food, which had a bit of raw plastic in it. Like all other things in the life of a Bangladeshi consumer, I took this incident sportingly. I thought there is no point complaining, as who should I complain to? In a country where I don’t even trust the law enforcers in many occasions, who on earth would protect my consumer rights and why? That was new and news to me.

I have seen many feedback forms in restaurants and service centers of telecom companies, but I have never received any feedback on my feedback, to know if they have at all taken any action to implement my suggestions. I am more of the view that they put up all these feedback forms as a mere formality only, they do not intend to take it seriously, which Bangladeshi company would ever admit that it has taken ‘one’ customer’s feedback seriously and have consequently brought about a change in the way they do business? Never, rather they would claim it to be their own success and innovation.

However, if you think times have changed and its high time that we, as consumers, speak up and make sure our rights are protected and respected, then this article is for you. Check out the website of e-consumer, wonder if something could be initiated in the Bangladeshi context. Also, its worth checking out the website of GapBusters. Among other related service, this company offers ‘Mystery Shopper’ services. I am not sure if companies in Bangladesh, those especially in the services sector, apply Mystery Shopping techniques to evaluate and improve their customer services standards. I believe interested entrepreneurs could very much come up with an idea to set up a company such as this, either you take a franchisee of GapBusters or set up something in the context of Bangladesh purely. Get your business model right and become the ‘voice of Bangladeshi consumers’. Remember Mr. Rokon-Ud-Dowla? Now the time has arrived to give it a more formal shape, from a private sector initiative. So that next time you go for a good time at Pizza Hut and KFC or at a Grameen Phone Service Center, the staff should be on their toes to serve you well, after all….we, the customers, are the king. And I am sure there are scores of people ready to become ‘mystery shoppers’ to give their formal opinion about products/services and earn some quick money in form of a part time job.

What's so special about your district?

Have you come across fellow Bangladeshis who are strong and sensitive about their district roots? Bangladesh is a tiny piece of land in the first place, nevertheless many of us are very keen to boast about our being ‘from Barisal’ or ‘from Syhet’ etc. and how we tend to criticize ‘those people from Comilla’ who have taken up the government jobs and ‘those people from Feni’ who are basically very commercial etc. etc. etc. I wonder how the anthropological, social science data would support all these urban myths and mysteries, but they are very much there especially among those who have come outside from Dhaka to settle there, they find the capital to be an interesting melting pot in their small scope of world, and they love to keep up their ‘ethnicity’ in the busy and bustling megacity.

All this love and loyalty for our own districts would have really been worth it if we had tried to set up some sort of an open air, theme based ‘haat’ highlighting each and every district and its specialities, handicrafts, produce etc. there. We could have called it ‘jela haat’, traders from respective districts could have been leased out spaces to take up stalls, sell their products, food etc. for say a week or so. Each month, a particular district could have been highlighted so that the visitors could have known in detail about that district, its history, the bright and brave sons who belong to that district, the main ‘key’ selling point of that district, economic/cultural activity…whatever that makes that district stand apart from others. I think the Dhaka city corporation surely have a role to play here to set up something permanent in government land in collaboration with Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation, who have a game in hand to develop domestic tourism in Bangladesh.

Social entrepreneurs could give it a thought, if we honestly feel so loyal about our own districts and roots, lets brand it well. Lets translate the words to a ‘jela haat’ somewhere in or around Dhaka city. Lets find out what makes Satkhira so special, lets find out what are the hidden tourist locations unforeseen in Netrakona, lets try out the five layer tea of Sylhet right in the heart of Dhaka and many more. Rural traders, manufacturers, designers could have got a much needed but guaranteed exposure in front of the 'capital city' crowd whereby they could have displayed their handicrafts, produce, decoration pieces, clothes whatever takes time to get noticed in our eyes. Also, the cat and mouse game of evicting floating hawkers from this place to that could have been shown a better way to deal with.

Make a list of 10 things that make your district special in your eyes. Let us all know that and celebrate that, after all... what is yours, is mine too, in the spirit of Bangladesh. See you in ‘jela haat’.

Leadership & Communications skll development course for Bangladeshi politicians

As I belong to the Generation FB (Facebook), I regularly get status updates from the trainer ‘friend’ of mine, who has nicely made a place for him in the training and development sector in Bangladesh. He makes timely use of web 2.0 technologies to signal his recent ventures, so that every time his ‘friends’ in FB think of staff training and capacity building guess who they think of calling first? He arranges leadership development programs for big multinational companies one week, arranges effective presentation skill trainings for development agencies the next week, meets movers and shakers regularly and is always on top of his game.

I sometimes feel like asking my trainer friend if he ever thought of finding a new market for his skills and expertise. The market exists in Bangladesh and is highly relevant and perhaps training this sector would do us lot of good in the long run. ‘Leadership, Presentation, Communications, Nation Building Training’ exclusively for politicians. How does that sound? The training could have included sessions on honesty, integrity, moral values, general knowledge, public etiquette etc. but they are beyond the scope of business related trainings at this point, so we focus more on the business DNA in the sphere of politicians and their politics.

Some criteria to attend this course could be as following.
Need to hold a party post of a registered political party in Bangladesh
Need to be in political career for atleast 1 year
Must have clearance from Anti-Corruption Commission
Minimum university graduate
(Some more?)

I have heard that there are specialised PR companies in the west, even in India, who give special training to their politician clients so that they put their best foot (and mouth…and avoid ‘foot in mouth’) forward when they appear in public or on air. I have noticed many politicians who find it hard to distinguish between public speaking in an open field of a gathering of say 10,000 people and in a crowded small room of say 50 people. They keep on giving speech with the same heat, pitch and excitement. Some have no wonder become so used to telling well crafted lies (very much like company CEOs at times?) to buy more time from the general public. This they must have gained without any training, its kind of inherent in the job itself.

However, may be you can think of setting up a unique PR agency in Bangladesh, focusing on these public figures. Teach them a few things on basic etiquettes and communications skills. They were never as fortunate as you were to have attended good business schools. But imagine, your fine skills are being used in a private company, the politicians have the job of running our country…a job thousand times more serious and relevant to all of us…is it not? See how you can put your two cents in that process.

So why are you in Facebook?

So why are you in Facebook? Take this a sequel to the earlier post where the fellow blogger asked ‘Are you in Facebook?’. Since then, social media and web 2.0 have evolved drastically and social networking websites such as Facebook is increasingly used by individuals and businesses to brand themselves and their companies. And did you know that every one among five Bangladeshi internet users has a Facebook account? (total number of internet users in Bangladesh stands at 500,000). If so involved we are as a nation into the social networking site, ever wondered why and how are you using it in your day to day lives and business?


There is one group of users who use the site just to unwind, and update their friends and families about their trivial actions and thoughts of life. They use their status message tool as a mean to speak their mind out and get comments, feedback from their network of friends. We call this group the ‘pure socialites’. They usually spend long hours in Facebook browsing friends’ photo albums, commenting, taking quiz and inviting others to take part etc. They usually do not have any intention of building any self image and/or to promote any of their professional activities, they prefer to keep Facebook free of any work related matter. Many of them are not even aware of their privacy options and are open to the idea of adding or accepting friend request from unknown contacts.

The other group of users prefer to read others statuses and view their photos but refrain from updating their own. They use the site to know more about their friends, even competitors and would like to plan accordingly, or even just ignore it all together. They do not spend as much time in Facebook as the ‘Socialites’ do, we call this group the ‘undercovers’. These users are very strict about their privacy options and sometimes make use of private messages instead of wall posts to communicate with their network of friends.

Then there is another group of users who use the status message tool to strategically promote themselves and/or their businesses. I know a trainer cum consultant whose status message mostly concerns about his latest training events with different companies and consulting assignments. This way he keeps on signalling his existing, new friends about his business acumen and uses Facebook for free to increase the ‘word-of-mouse’ in combination with the traditional ‘word-of-mouth’. This group is called the 'business users'. A coffee lounge and a restaurant in Dhaka have received good response from its target audience by creating events and inviting guests, updating statuses in line with company activities.

Then there is the group of ‘stars’, having a friend list of couple of thousands and even if they write ‘….’ as their status message, they will get atleast 5 comments on a blank status. They are usually in a position to take great advantage of their ‘star’ status, however many of them still prefer to use it to express their ‘blank’ moods or news about their dogs and car only.

A corollary of this group is the ‘star gazers’, who prefer to keep commenting and ‘liking’ the status messages of the ‘stars’ they are friends with. They do so with the hope of getting noticed by the star in due course of time, to be able to attain any personal or professional gain, or just to be happy with the idea of affiliation with the ‘star’.

As web 2.0 and new media is changing the landscape of how we interact with others and how we do business over, through and by the internet, may be its time we rethink why we are in social networking sites such as Facebook? Could it be used to get recommendations for jobs? Could it be used to ‘crowdsource’ an idea for your produce, service? Could it be used for self or company promotion? Or shall we just use it as an alternative of watching TV or playing sports? Just some food for thought.

BREAKING: Brac Bank outdid Prime Bank -according to Sajjadur Rahman (who else did you expect?)

Remember how Sajjadur Rahman always has Brac Bank to promote? Check out the graph. I think Bangladesh Bank might be interested in the new "findings".

In all fairness Sajjadur Rahman has too much on his plate, -Brac Bank PR (chamcha) and a 'reporter'.

Whose festival is it any ways?

Since a special festival is just 4 days away, wonder if it would take a big guess for you if I ask you the question, “What is the biggest festival of Bangladesh?”


I have thought about it for a while, asked acquaintances and friends. Some did say it must be Eid, but majority of the persons I asked opted for ‘Pohela Boishakh’, the Bangla New Year celebrations that take place every year on the 14th day of April. This is the time to remember and realize our Bengali heritage and our being ‘Bengali’. One time of the year when the Bangladeshi Bengalis make merry irrespective of their being Muslims or Hindus, Christians or Buddhists. One time of the year when the national culture takes pride beyond and above shallow bias towards ‘I am from Comilla and he is from Sirajganj, she is from Sylhet and they are from Khulna’, useless group-ism based on tiny districts of a very tiny country in the first place. So ‘Pohela Boishakh’ is the largest and widely accepted and celebrated festival of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Agree of Disagree?

Volley of questions yet again.

1. Tell me what is the biggest festival of the planet Earth?
2. If you have answered ‘Christmas’, why is this?
3. Why is ‘Christmas’ celebrated and cities and malls are decorated even in ‘Muslim’ countries like Malaysia, Indonesia? Or even in India?
4. Whose celebration is Valentine’s Day? English, French, Christian?
5. Can you guess how long will it take before we start celebrating Halloween in Dhaka? (some have already started donning the ghost masks in Gulshan and asking for a ‘treat of trick’)

The argument is, there seems to be an increasing trend of commercialising and commoditising festivals around the world. Those who have money and some brain and even very little religious or cultural affiliation to the festival in question, are making sure that the ‘rest of us’ celebrate it in a big way and help increase sales and merchandise before, during, after and surrounding that festival. This also has a psychological effect to consumers like us. Have you exchanged Christmas wishes to your friends last year through Facebook and other means, even though neither your nor your friends might be Christians? Pretty much like Valentine’s Day, does Christmas make you feel that ‘it is not only meant for Christians only’, rather it is the festival of the mass earthlings like you and me? Santa is so much fun isn’t it? What about the parties with Santa cap and wearing red and snow white? Please note that the argument is not against celebrating one particular festival by discarding it as alien, rather personally I am interested to have fun and make merry in each and any festival as long as there is an element of ‘fun’ in it. What makes me wonder is that till when shall we keep on dancing to others tunes? Lets be fair, if this is globalisation and internet has the power to blur geographic boundaries of cultures and nations, why not ‘others’ also start dancing in our tunes during ‘our’ festivals?

Great Grand Indians have already made sure that they have their footprints in every corner of the world (not sure about Antarctica though). They have carried with them the tradition of celebrating unique festivals like Holi and Diwali, nicely labelled as the ‘Festival of Colors’ and the ‘Festival of Lights’. That day is round the corner when the whole world (that includes mainly non-Indians) would play colors with each other in Times Square and Trafalgar Square and light up candles in their households on these ‘originally Indian’ festivals.


The argument is, it does not matter if the festival itself truly holds potential for branding as a ‘global festival’ or not, it all depends on the ‘merry makers’, bearers of that tradition to spot the global reach of their festivals and then spread it around the world, so that it not only becomes a global festival, but it also creates scope for merchandizing surrounding it, and promotes the nation, the culture throughout different channels and places.

Coming back to what we have.

1. How could Eid be celebrated so that it could create the mass appeal pretty much like other religious festivals? If you think its only meant for Muslims, and Islam in general advocates a toned-down festivities, then focus on the next point only.
2. If we have festivals like Pohela Boishakh, Nobanno Utshob, Pohela Falgun or even Shaheed Dibash (International Mother Tongue Day), what have we done so far and what more could be done to elevate these festivals to a global level and brand them as a ‘global festival, ‘originally celebrated by Bangladeshi Bengalis’?

Perhaps you are reading this article from Sydney, or Camden Town or Bricklane Brooklyn. Ask yourself what you have done during these festivals when you are on ‘foreign’ soil. Probability is very high that you 1) dressed up in traditional costume (controversy exists even there what our national costumer actually is) 2) drove to a community center or park 3) met fellow expats 4) ate ‘deshi food’ 5) listened to some Bangla songs, dance performances by wards of Bengali families, even by those of yours 6) took a lot of photos and uploaded it to flickr or Facebook 7) went back home happy. Right?

I tell you something, if we don’t brand our festivals first and fast, ‘someone else’ will certainly do it and due to their size and power and money and patriotism and branding techniques and whatever you say…we will not be left with much options.

Say what if

1. the Bangladeshi students abroad bring out a grand combined carnival (not separate ones based on political beliefs and districts) on Pohela Boishakh, emulating what happens in TSC (Charukala) on 14th April?
2. the expat Bangladeshis convince the Mayor of London or New York that the celebrations take place not only in our ghettos of Bricklane and Brooklyn, but we bring it on big time at Trafalgar Square and Time Square? This way the festivals will have a global exposure.
3. we arrange ‘speech games’ for foreign nationals on 21st February, we arrange language games, quizzes in universities and open areas involving a lot of foreigners, so that we can not only celebrate the day but also could promote ‘our’ brand of festivals to others, so that they eventually start practicing it as their own festival some day.

Word-of-mouth is being supplemented by ‘Word-of-mouse’ these days. Its good to see that Bangladeshi netizens making use of their social media profiles and making the best use of web 2.0 tools to atleast sing in one rhyme and rhythm on special occasions. But we ought to do more.

You might argue that cultural imperialism is directly related to economic imperialism and prowess. However, if there remains any rooms for branding blended with patriotism, lets turn the board around. Lets make sure Jim, Jack and Jane ALSO carry out colourful masked processions with dhak-dole, ektara, dotara on Pohela Boishakh, I am sure we are equally exciting if not more comparing with Mardi Gras and Nottinghill Carnival, true that we are devoid of flesh and lager, but we hold the chance to present the world a ‘cleaner’ version of festivals.

Shubho Nobo Borsho.


image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pohela_boishakh_2.jpg

'Whats Up? with Nazim Farhan Choudhury

Nazim Farhan Choudhury participates in the 'Whats Up?' series of email interviews arranged by the Bangladesh Corporate Blog to find out the current snapshots in business activities of Bangladeshi managers, entrepreneurs and executives.

1. How is your business performing during global recession these days?

There are two answers to this. Good and bad. Our advertising business has been hit by the slow down. Clients are cutting back spends. However our graphic services outsourcing business is doing well as more companies are looking for a more value driven proposition for their pre-press solutions.

2. What is the new venture you are looking into now?
Urban door-to-door
Rural activation and distribution
New media strategy and management
Branded content


3. What is your core competitive advantage? Has it remained same or have changed over the last few years?
It has evolved over the last few years. We are basically in the process of moving from being an advertising agency to a complete communications solution provider.

4. Which external factor in the country, economy, market you are concerned with now? How your business plans to tackle it?
A slow down in the garments sector, coupled with the freeze in manpower exports will result in unemployment increasing and thereby affecting the purchasing power of our client’s consumers. That in turn will lead to drop in investments.

We are fast diversifying our offerings so that the value proposition we offer our clients in significant. Instead of going to multiple service providers they can concentrate their relationship will us and as we can manage the entire value chain, we can reduce their investments


5. Do you use any online social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, blogs) to promote your business, yourself? Which ones do you use and how often do you use it?
Yes we do. Some of our newer businesses are on FB (AktiVision, Screaming Girl, Northbrook, amarpotaka, etc) However I must confess; this is really something new for us. Interestingly we now have the capability to manage new media strategy and implementation for our clients.

6. How do you describe your business in one line?
Providing appropriate communication solutions to our clients.


Nazim Farhan Choudhury
Deputy Managing Director
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Are you a boro guru or a buro goru?

Goru (produces shit and eats grass, attends Moha Guru-Goru seminars, MGG)--> 'buro goru--> guru (produces milky knowledge and meaty words, chairing MGG seminars, panelists)--> boro guru (produces shit and eats grass--> reincarnation as a goru.

So which phase of evolution are you in? Are you simply still a ‘goru’ or a ‘buro goru’ or you have successfully become a ‘guru’ or better still…you have grown to be a ‘boro guru’? Think about it…are you eating enough grass, producing lot of intellectual cow-dung or are you truly producing quality milk (fat free) in form of new and contextual wisdom, idea, knowledge? Wondering what all these ‘goru-guru’ dilly dally is all about?

Well, I am a strong supporter of the petition that the Bangla word ‘goru’ be included in the English language dictionary, pretty much as the Bangla word ‘guru’ (Yes I claim it to be a Bangla word and lets brand it) is widely used these days to describe someone full of knowledge and expertise in any particular field. A ‘goru’ is someone like me who is amused very easily and frequently by the ‘knowledge’ of prominent gurus of branding, entrepreneurship, management etc. A ‘goru’ initially does not have the required know-how, contacts, platform, money to become a ‘guru’ himself eventually. So he tries to get free tickets to Moha Guru-Goru (MGG) seminars on business, management, brands etc. to achieve enlightenment.

A ‘buro goru’ is a bigger version of a ‘goru’. Someone who keeps on circling in the same cycle over years, without much success to neither implement the knowledge received from ‘gurus’ and ‘boro gurus’ in seminars, workshops nor being able to become a ‘guru’ himself by hook or by crook. ‘buro gorus’ also find themselves in the audience seat of the same seminars, events held year after year in the same city in different locations and keep on repeating the same act of dressing up well and exchanging business cards and smile, hand-shakes during the programs, without much success.

The definition of a ‘guru’ is already given and we are seeing many of them heating up the conference hotel rooms in Dhaka recently, pretty much on a regular basis. A ‘boro guru’ is the ‘baap’ of all gurus, usually with ‘many years of experience and awards’ in the designated fields. Although ‘gurus’ are generally seen to generate bits and pieces of knowledge during those events, ‘boro gurus’ usually become stale and end up producing lot of old wine in new bottle. In other words, they produce same shit and keep on living on grasses until they realize that they have again become a ‘goru’, thus completing the cycle of ‘gurulogy’.

A popular proverb in Bangla says ‘deshi jogi bhik payna’. (Wonder if any exact English exists or not…but lets put it as….country beggar gets no alms). But another proverb is ready to enter into the Bangla linguistics which would go as ‘Bangladeshe bideshi bhikhario jogi-guru shomo’ (in Bangladesh, even a foreign beggar is guru-like’). We are seeing more and more ‘shada babas’ and ‘bideshi bystanders’ coming into Bangladesh and giving us knowledge on hot topics such as branding, business and management. No wonder during the global credit crunch, emerging economies like Bangladesh are the best place to sell some words and earn some living isn’t it? No wonder when the West started embracing Yoga, the elites in our part of the world were convinced that it must be a good thing. When Madonna started donning henna (mehendi), we also became aware and crazy about using it even in previously unusual occasions. Somehow we can’t still believe that our local boys, girls, uncles, aunties are good enough to be given the same platform, glamour, publicity when it comes to preaching about branding, business, management, entrepreneurship etc. We need a white magic stick or even an Indian one, to show us the way, which had been lying in front of us for a long time anyways, only gathering negligence, mistrust and dust from our part.

Some good thing about attending these hotel-bound conferences are the feel-good-factor, look-good-factor, talk-good-factor. You sit in a sound-proof room, with big shots, small and big fishes in the industry and listen to things which you think you are hearing for the first time. However a careful recalling might lead you to the fact that you must have studied the same concepts in your business school, if you were serious enough a student that is. Also, if you leverage the web 2.0 you could be very well abreast with the latest thoughts and directions in the fields of your interest. But oi arki, we love exclusivity, we would make sure we understand something new from a seminar we attend after paying a hefty price for the ticket. After all, what would others say if I admit that it was more glamour, good hotel food and mingling with the wanna-bees and wanna-babes in the local and global corporate sector, rather than any true value addition to knowledge?

A good thing however about foreign ‘gurus’ is that they have acquired the required body language and classy acts to transmit their thoughts or even hide their shallow knowledge in some occasions. However, they are more or less ‘feet on the ground’. Many of our ‘desi gurus’ unfortunately sometimes suffer from ‘bhaab’ syndromes (an attitude problem) and walk a feet above ground due to the helium-heavy-heads and airy talks. The genuine ones keep off from the gaudy display of knowledge and prefer alternative means to become a true ‘guru’. But they remain in low lights due to no branding, not many good friends in right places, money etc.

As a simple ‘goru’ myself, I would love to see these desi, humble, down to earth and resourceful ‘guru’s teach and preach us about how to do branding and business in Bangladesh. Its our problem we don’t brand our local voices more and give more weight to what ‘others’ say. How many of our so called local think-tanks on branding have actually been invited to deliver speeches on the same topics outside of Bangladesh?

End of a goru-post. Hamba.

Disclaimer: The Cow (goru) is a lovely animal, the author has composed long essays on this gentle animal while in high school and achieved high grades. This post does not intend to harm personally any innocent 'goru' or a 'guru'. Whatever you are, be happy, eat grass, produce milk, shit and happy hambaa-ing in the seminars.

Ad some local on me, or dub some ad on me?

One of the everlasting debates in multinational companies is to decide between local ads vs. dubbed versions of global ads. Although both school of thoughts enjoy a loyal fan base, the answer to this lies with specific situation based on which, the client can determine the way forward. Following are few of the issues to ponder while selecting any of the solutions.


- Creativity ideologically is beyond the language barriers. Which in turn allows it to convey its messages to anyone and everyone irrespective of their knowledge base and language preferences. Visual communication should carry the ease of understanding across any region without verbal aids. Foreign ads are favorable in this respect. Case in reference, Coke/ DHL has long enjoyed running foreign ads successfully due to their strong visual communications.

- Literacy plays a major role in the communication development phase citing reasons as “level of understanding”, “language preferences” or even “choice of wording”. In a country like Bangladesh, where literacy rate stands at 46-50% on an average, any English copy is sure to bomb in the effectiveness market. Many brands have switched to dubbed pay-off lines to convey their message (e.g. Tang) while other keeping the original (e.g. Warid Telecom and “be heard”) have drastically failed to make a connect with the consumers. Notable in this regard, a mix of Bengali and English words (commonly referred as Banglish) has worked wonders lately, i.e. Frutika “ektu beshii pure”.

- When a global communication is usually developed it keeps in mind a broader set of issues that helps in wide acceptability and usage across various languages. However, a fundamental issue is found to be lacking in most global commercials. While we all strive for providing a more personal, a more customized solution to all out customers, enticing them to buy our products looking at a global ad is a risky business. Communications that involve human interfaces and emotions are less likely to be taken positively since every nation/region has their very own style of expression.

- Many a country lacks the creative powerhouse or local know-how to develop a local ad for a global company that will be true to the original brand message. This lack of credibility also drives the clients to depend on foreign aids for their communication purposes, too. However, a country like Bangladesh, which has grown leaps and bounds in terms of creative ideas and executions, is unlikely to be such a destination. Over the past few years, the unprecedented growth and success the local advertising fraternity has enjoyed makes the choice of going ahead with a global communication in a bigger limbo.

I have tried to put in place, a few of the reasons, I find it obligatory to go ahead with a locally developed communication, but all said and done, it’s a value-driven decision and numbers, I would rather leave it to experts to comment on.

By

Sabih Ahmed, is a free-lance business blogger

BD Companies on Dow Jones SAFE 100 Index

The Dow Jones SAFE 100 Index measures the performance of 100 blue-chip companies in five of the eight member states of the South Asian Federation of Exchanges (SAFE). The five member states included in the index are: India, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The 17 companies that are being added to the Dow Jones SAFE 100 Index are: Uttara Bank Ltd. (Bangladesh, Banks, UTTARABAN.DH), Pubali Bank Ltd. (Bangladesh, Banks, PUBALIBAN.DH), AB Bank Ltd. (Bangladesh, Banks, ABBANK.DH), Hero Honda Motors Ltd. (India, Automobiles & Parts, 500182.BY), National Bank Ltd. (Bangladesh, Banks, NBL.DH), Unilever Pakistan Ltd. (Pakistan, Food & Beverages, ULEVER.KY), Habib Bank Ltd. (Pakistan, Banks, HBL.KA), Tata Power Co. Ltd. (India, Utilities, 500400.BY), Power Grid Co. of Bangladesh Ltd. (Bangladesh, Utilities, POWERGRID.DH), Prime Bank Ltd. (Bangladesh, Banks, PRIMEBANK.DH), Mundra Port & Special Economic Zone Ltd. (India, Industrial Goods & Services, 532921.BY), Nestle India Ltd. (India, Food & Beverages, 500790.BY), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (India, Oil & Gas, 500547.BY), Bank of India (India, Banks, 532149.BY), Power Finance Corp. Ltd. (India, Utilities, 532810.BY), NMDC Ltd. (India, Basic Resources, 526371.BY) and Neyveli Lignite Corp. Ltd. (India, Utilities, 513683.BY).

About Dow Jones Indexes

A full-service index provider, Dow Jones Indexes develops, maintains and licenses indexes for use as benchmarks and as the basis of investment products. Best known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Jones Indexes also is co-owner of the Dow Jones STOXX indexes, the world's leading pan-European indexes, and together with Wilshire Associates, provides the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Index family, which is anchored by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 and covers more than 12,000 securities in 65 markets. Beyond equity indexes, Dow Jones Indexes maintains a number of alternative indexes, including measures of the hedge fund and commodity markets. Dow Jones indexes are maintained according to clear, unbiased and systematic methodologies that are fully integrated within index families. www.djindexes.com

Dow Jones & Company (www.dowjones.com) is a News Corporation company (Nasdaq: NWS) (Nasdaq: NWSA) (ASX: NWS) (ASX:NWSLV) (www.newscorp.com). Dow Jones is a leading provider of global business news and information services. Its Consumer Media Group publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Its Enterprise Media Group includes Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Factiva, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Financial Information Services. Its Local Media Group operates community-based information franchises. Dow Jones owns 50% of SmartMoney and 33% of STOXX Ltd. and provides news content to radio stations in the U.S.

Bailing out Bangladeshi businesses

Abdullah A. Dewan writes

THE Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the country's prime foreign currency earner, has made the following bailout proposals at a press conference on March 16.
• Rescheduling of 3 and 5yrs term loans to 7 and 10yrs term loans;
• Lowering interest rate from 15% to 7%;
• Withdrawing VAT from readymade garment (RMG) sector;
• Subsidizing diesel for RMG, like the farm sector;
• Cash pay-off to stay competitive.

Last Sunday, the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) proposed a Tk 6,000 crore rescue package for the export businesses. It included a Tk 3,300-3,500 crore bailout plan for the RMG exporters. The Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) demanded a 10% cash incentive for knitwear exporters.
The BGMEA chief Salam Murshedy asked for an additional Tk 10 against every dollar of 30% total export value. In addition, he urged the government to ask banks to reschedule BGMEA outstanding loans by at least 10 years and slash the bank interest rate to 7%.

Murshedy pleaded that these measures would help BGMEA members withstand the global recession-driven demand slack culminating in declining exports, which reached 17.58% in February. To justify the demand for bailout, Murshedy said that three major buyers of Bangladesh's RMG products, including UK-based Woolworth, went bankrupt recently. To promote exports in the present global downturn, BGMEA plans to promote RMG products in old markets and some potential export destinations. This seems to be the prudent approach to fight the recession-demand slack. FBCCI, BGMEA, and BKMEA's (the troika) plea for bailout money is no different from tax payers' subsidy to the RMG sector. The US and other governments have already started doing that through tax payers' part ownership of the businesses receiving bailout money until they stand on their own. (For example, 80% of AIG shares are owned by tax payers.) Asking banks to reschedule loan terms may endanger cash and income flow of the banking sector, putting healthy banks at risks of insolvency and requiring them to ask for bailout money later. That's a dangerous route to take. Besides, why should government persuade banks? It is the businesses' that need to make such a move.

Businesses should always discuss with their bank whether additional emergency funding is available. The medium and long-term plans should form part of any dialogue. Timely communication with the bank is important as bank managers and financiers who are aware of the problems are likely to come to their rescue. Following the US example, what the government can do is subsidize some portion of the interest if the banks are willing to lower the interest on existing loans for a limited time period. Since some of the foreign retail clients have gone bankrupt it won't be easy to achieve the previously targeted $14 billion goal of RMG exports. So, in the process, some of the weaker factories won't survive. Hence, proving them bailout money would be tantamount to knowingly buying the failing businesses with tax payers' money.

Reducing VAT is a possible option but that will be equivalent to subsidy because, to make up for the lost tax revenues, the government must resort to deficit financing. Subsidizing gas to the RMG sector is similar to reducing VAT. The worst proposal is "cash incentive," which literally means "print money and give it to us." However, the troika may ask the government to initiate guaranteed financial schemes to help viable businesses with provisional cash flow predicaments.
By any measure of economic rationality, the troika is asking for too much -- in essence, nothing is left out -- which can be interpreted as an attempt to run businesses with tax payers' financing. Just because these businesses earn foreign exchange do not make them any different from other businesses, which also generate domestic employment and income and contribute to GDP.
What about the expatriates who used to remit dollars and now are unemployed, and returned home empty handed and broken hearted? Why not some bailout money for them in the form of unemployment benefits?

In order for the government to inject bailout money or stimulus spending in infrastructure building, it must first take money out of the economy through new taxation or borrowing. Infusion of bailout money has a negative effect on the economy, and the worse if the recipient businesses fail to survive. The inflation created from deficit spending will hurt the poor consumers and the public servants living on fixed incomes. Any bailout money must be distributed in a transparent manner with proper accountability. The criterion must be the viability of the specific RMG factory concerned -- not who owns the factory. The global recession may be used as gambit by many powerful and well connected factory owners, including some lawmakers, to cash in their ailing business with tax payers money.

In the US, businesses and banks that received bailout money have squandered hundreds of millions in paying bonuses and partying in luxury resort hotels in the name of promoting businesses. Why would the business people in Bangladesh be any different?

Dr. Abdullah A. Dewan is Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University.

AirAsia: The Business Maestro

Anyone out there who doesn’t know about AirAsia? I will be surprised!! If you are a traveler continuously updating yourself with packages offered by various different travel agencies, than all such travel enthusiasts at least for once visited AirAsia website and checked out there offers. And once checked, the entire community started looking for international credit cards just to grab one ticket to Malaysia and why not, when a 370 USD air fare is discounted to 123 USD, even those who never thought of travelling to Malaysia will jump for a move.



Now the big Q, by offering such a low rate, how does AirAsia manage their business? Here are few strategies worth pondering.

1. AirAsia sold tickets for entire one year within 2 weeks.
2. They will earn interest. A ticket sold in February scheduled for November, earns them interest for 9 months. This is additional buck to the pockets.
3. Not only air tickets, they also had cheap hotels to offer. So not only a buyer bought the air tickets, also booked hotels through AirAsia.
4. To add more, you also had cheap offers to other regions. So now a buyer bought air tickets not only for Kuala Lumpur (KL), but from KL to Langkawi.
5. And guess what, who wants to travel alone. So a buyer influenced his/her friends to tag in along as well. So one interested person ended up influencing few more.
6. Did you notice that rates where higher especially on weekends. So AirAsia had a slot, different rates on different days as per demand. Maybe a buyer hoped he/she will be able to buy return tickets for 123 USD, but on his/her chosen day, the total price was 170 USD. Still, why miss the chance just for 3,500 Taka only, the offer still is very cheap. So many such buyers paid little more than the cheapest offer.
7. Other additional services also had a price, like choosing your seat, price for luggage, and bus tickets to the City Central. All these ads up another 20-30 USD.

So just one buyer seeing one discounted offer ended up providing the followings to AirAsia:-
1. Buying return Tickets to KL, either at the cheapest rate or higher.
2. Buying return tickets from KL to other regions (Langkawi).
3. Booking and paying for hotels.
4. Buying additional services
5. And most importantly, influenced others to buy and thus acting as a sales person.

Now the reality, exactly how many people who bought a ticket in February scheduled to travel in November will actually be able to make it? There is a very high chance that many will not make it, and sad but true, if you want to re-schedule your flight, than you almost end up paying a fee equal to your original ticket price. So a customer who misses his flight either ends up paying another 150+ USD to reschedule the flight, or misses the flight completely, no refund by the way. Many such buyers will actually not make it which in return reduces Air weight saving AirAsia’s fuel cost and leaving paid hotel rooms empty which can be resold.

So all in all, many sources of income for AirAsia which makes up for their reduced ticket price. If you are a Bangladeshi businessman having big dreams, why not learn the all round the year discount concept, you not only generate entire one year sales in a week time, you also make your buyers sale for you. In current recession period, discount stores are bound to hit big in the market. Just go grab it.

Mahboob Hossain

Mahboob Hossain is working in World’s number one Market research company and is actively involved in writing, teaching and business counseling.

Interest of Tk 8000 for Less than 1 Taka

A Mr. Mojammel Haque has sent his opinion in the Daily Ittefaq on March 09, 2009 stating that, he obtained a credit card from BRAC bank namely “Free for Life” card. He alleged that he had been using the card for several years while paying the monthly bills regularly. He further mentions that in his card there was an unpaid balance of Tk 0.96, which is less than Tk 1.00. As the amount was very small he did not care for paying any bills further. Lately in the month of March he has found that his credit card has a bill of Tk Tk 8069.77. Shocked with this balance he called the Call Center and got a reply that he has to pay the bill and he has no other option. …

The above is the extract taken from “Letters to Editor” page of The Daily Ittefaq. I personally think, the matter which has been published as above, does not provide sufficient information to justify the facts, because the Mr. Haque did not provide when he had an unpaid balance of Tk 0.69 and when he received the bill for unpaid amount. Yet, whatever time period passed in between, I think a bill of Tk 8069.77 is an impossible bill for an amount less than One taka. If the thing is true, we the consumers should go tough against this kind of fees and charges of credit card in our country. Dear readers, if you have any relevant or similar experience with your credit card bills, please share it here. Thanks.

The Brac Bank Chamcha (Sajjadur Rahman) at The Daily Star

Sometimes companies get too close for comfort with the media. Some are painfully obvious to normal readers while the ones participating in the act do so without any recollection or humility.

It has been a constant observation that one writer, X of The Daily Star usually has one goal to promote and talk about: Brac Bank. So close is the relationship between this "reporter" that whenever his Brac Bank publicity article is published, the newspaper also carries a Brac Bank ad. A quick search of The Daily Star archive will find that Brac Bank and X are indeed married.

Moreover X enjoys unhindered access to the top management of Brac Bank. Why is this odd? Because most executives stay away from the media to avoid the "cut and paste" of statements to suit a motive. But Brac Bank is strikingly different, giving X access to the entire staff, Chairman and MD. The financial link between these two entities is painfully obvious after articles after articles always center around Brac Bank.

Even the most unrelated bank news always has a Brac Bank tie in, even though it is not relevant. Bangladesh Bank letting banks open branches? Oh, Brac Bank is opening 15 branches this year (others don't matter). The entire article follows like a Brac Bank ad.

Nevertheless it does not mean that Brac Bank itself is not newsworthy. Believe me they are. The bank is still continuously refusing to reimburse victims of the 1970s style locker heist that took place last year. Where is X's puff piece on that? You won't see anything regarding this news or any updates either by X or The Daily Star.

Secondly I don't know if anyone has noticed their stock has tanked for no good reason for awhile now. This is long before GSP Finance came into the picture or went out. What no discussion why a stock trading at Tk 1200 is now at Tk 550 even without any dividend announcement? But I will disclose that I own Brac Bank stock (and if I was X I would also disclose the financial arrangements between us).

Other than the American banks, I don't believe any Bangladeshi Bank's stock has tanked so badly. This is even after paying for articles and stretching the truth in so many X articles.

Although the financial arrangement is obvious there are lessons to be learnt. Like the noted MasterCard ad, somethings in life are priceless. Maintaining proper security over bank lockers is one of them, because 40 puff pieces and paying off a reporter is not going to fix it. Neither is it going to cover up for a flawed business model. But even more important is a writer's reputation. Everything that X will ever write has been paid for.

Start branding a Gamcha first

Flashback. Early 90’s. Dhaka. When the city used to host SAARC summits and there were pictures of the nation heads and 7 South Asian country flags ornamenting the streets of Dhaka. Live session updates in the BTV used to bring along with it a few observations which I used to convert to questions and pester my father from time to time. Some of them which I still recall are as following.


1. Why does the King of Bhutan wears a frock/skirt and comes to visit a foreign country in such a high profile summit?
2. Why does the Sri Lankan president wear a white ‘lungi’ and attend such official meeting of high-ups?
3. I noticed the colourful special cap worn by the Nepali premier and the tight-fitting pyjamas, why so?
4. The Pakistani leaders used to wear their traditional shalwar-kurta with ‘koti’
5. Indian leaders used to wear their traditional wears, sometimes in dhuti, panjabi etc.
6. What is the national dress of Bangladeshi people? Female leaders wear saree ofcourse and male leaders wear safari suit, prince coats, suit etc. But what is actually our national dress?

I remember people saying that actually our national dress should be white payjama panjabi and black koti. Then some rejected this idea saying that it closely resembles to the party outfit of a leading political party. Then some said that our national dress is lungi and genji. For women, its saree. The bottom line is, I never got any one answer to this question. We have a national element for almost everything, national day, animal, bird, fruit etc. But what about dress? You might also argue that why do we need one? But I think we do, as an ambassador of the country, I would like to carry my identity with me and show it off from time to time. This is the generation R&G if you call it.

What you wear is something that communicates non-verbally to others around you about your identity. It can be a completely unique tip-to-toe outfit like a saree or a payjama panjabi or it could be a simple accessory which you could carry on you which would speak out loud your ethnicity. What is it for us?

I bought a pair of Shemaghs (which are very much a la mode these days) this evening and was wondering as I made my way to the underground that a Bangladeshi Bengali donning an Arab scarf taking a stroll in the heart of the cosmopolitan city of London, the capital of the United Kingdom….is this called globalization? Or I am just being a Londoner while in London? Don’t know much, but I always wondered why it never crossed my mind to promote a simple gamcha from amar shonar bangla? Even though Bibi Russell tried making a statement with her outfits that only she wears herself, although Grameen Check created bit of a stir, why did these never crossed the border? Did they fail to convince the style icons of Bangladesh? Do we think that gamcha is for 'khet gorib' people only? It made me sad after Googling ‘gamcha’ to realize that its actually an ‘Indian fabric’, mostly worn in Bengal, Assam etc. If saree is Indian, Gamcha is Indian, Shalwar Kurta is Pakistani, suits and ties are ‘Western’, what is Bangladeshi then?

I believe a time has come when we need to ‘accessorize patriotism’ somehow. If we love red and green, we should be doing more to wear it, flaunt it and make even others a fan of it. Hats off to Arabs who made their Shemaghs such a big hit around the world, ofcourse even among non-Arabs. Hope someday soon something uniquely from Bangladesh will be a hit fashion item to be worn by foreigners walking down the streets of New York or London. So along with branding a big concept like the country, lets start small by start something as small as a Gamcha.

Who will fix up Retail Selling Price?

The attached poster is taken from a photocopy cum flexiload shop at Motijheel. As of today, most of the people in the city know about this trend. Now, lets have a simple math with an assumption that total 40% of the 2.4 million GP subscribers will charge Taka 40 at a time. That means 2.4 x 0.40 = 9.6 lac subscriber will pay additional 9.6 lac taka at a time to charge their account. I do not want to further proceed with the question, what will be the extra money paid in a month or in a year.... I just stop at this point and let the reader ponder on it.

Lately, smokers of B&H and B&H Light already know that, if you buy a single stick of any of the two brands, you do not get back Tk 0.50. On a single transaction, it may seem pretty low. However, when you estimate the figure on whole market and monthly or yearly basis, then the figure matters!!

Whose benefit is this, when the trade is getting more profit than fixed by the company? First of all the retail traders are making the profit. However, if the scenario is explained in a different angle? Suppose, the companies take such strategy wittingly (like B&H) so that, it favors retailers not to give back fifty paisa and allows the retailer to pile up this. Thus the company strategy favors the ratailers without even increasing the retail price!! Therefore, brand image does not get upset but the retailers remain happy even at a lower profit rate offered.

In both of the above cases, two multinational companies are quoting one retail price but the product is selling at another price. My humble question to you all is: whose responsibility is this to affirm the Retail Selling Price at par with the company's quoted retail price? and how?

New markets for Bangladeshi people power!

No matter how much you laugh at me, but somehow I could not get over this term which became very fond of since last year. Its called ‘strategic migration’. The term was mentioned in one of the posts here in this blog and one of the visitors jokingly commented on that as well, saying that ‘what else to expect from an MBA with a strategic management major (which is me)’. Nevertheless, my hopes are rekindled again seeing that government is rethinking their strategy to export Bangladeshi manpower to new markets.


I always dreamt of sending packs of Bangladeshi manpower to vast empty lands of Russia. I always wondered how unfair it is that a country like Russia has such a vast amount of land with such a low population comparing to Bangladesh. And, why should we remain squeezed back to back against each other in the largest delta of the world, but which is still one of the smallest countries of the world. So we should be the first to recognize that our natural biggest comparative advantage as a nation is our manpower. The more we train them, the more we export them, the better it is. It will not only help the country to get more remittances, but it will also make sure that we just have enough people in the country that it can accommodate, environmentally, socially speaking.

Also, we should explore how this term 'manpower' can be effectively changed to 'people power', so that equal number of Bangladeshi women can be trained and sent to countries with proper jobs which might fit their skills, cultural and social orientations etc.

I hope to live to that day when Bangladeshi manpower and Bangladeshis will have imprinted their footmark in almost every country of the world, pretty much like the Chinese or even more like the Indians I suppose. Lets come out of our homes, conquer new territories with our merit and culture. Lets leave a mark.


image : http://www.virsagi.com/images/manpower_supply_01.jpg

Something I Assumed was Free

Our beloved corporate shill, The Daily Star, has announced something spectacular. So spectacular you will grasp why this has made the front page on multiple occasions. You would assume with the money they get to promote Grameenphone's objectives (more about that later) and promote some companies in a unnatural way -that giving free copies to school children would be standard.

But no. Not even a single copy of this newspaper was ever given to anyone free-of-charge. Its not like there was ever a shortage of paper, the copies or distribution. They just simply chose not to for the Tk 10 hawker price. What made them change? A sponsorship deal from AKtel.

This newspaper is shrewd that it required the money from AKtel to get them to give free copies to poor school children who cannot afford newspapers let alone an education. Kudos to AKtel for picking up on this deal, showing Bangladesh your brighter side and in the process revealing the shocking practices of The Daily Star.

At times like these, you wish the inevitable would come faster. You wish that tomorrow all of Bangladesh, like the Western world stopped paying for Newspapers, their expensive ads and classifieds. And instead rely on their online versions, view them with Firefox Adblock, and post our classifieds on Craigslist. This would be a better project for AKtel -getting rid of adulterated and the ruthless media altogether and at once.

Organized Retail aka. MBA Mudi Dokandars

Sitting idle on a rather sunny Saturday with bloated eyes (due to bacteria) and a nail-biting cricket match on TV, I had the weirdest of all ideas blinking in my upper chamber; what about writing down my recent brainstorming regarding retail scenario of Bangladesh.

I know for sure, a moderate graduate with no significant trade or retail experience should be the last person to think in the lines of organized retail, but that same graduate does read up on what's keeping the businesses busy in both local and global scenario. Organized retail being vehemently marketed in our neighboring India Inc. goes on to prove where we will be heading into in just about a decade. In fact I remember one job interview where we discussed where Dhaka was in terms of innovations/advances in comparison to India. Although we (me and the interviewer) probably undermined Dhaka a little too much in contrast to Kolkata and Mumbai, its probably fair to say that they were once in the same sphere as we are today. May be ‘dhaliwood’ would never prosper as much as cousin sister ‘bolly’, but elsewhere we can definitely catch up one day.

And continuing with the catching up game, I need to bring back by wander-lusty mind to the topic of interest, organized retail. Agora and Nandan have long fought over getting the TOM share of the modern-urban consumers, successful or not they have hardly been able to make a dent into the fresh durables markets or even the local groceries. There are other worthy competitors, e.g. PQS or Meena Bazar (honestly they both have faired better than Nandan at least); but they all have had created a new space for them in the consumers ‘bajar fordo’ (shopping list) instead of taking someone else's place.

This brings me back to what was bothering me about all this, are we actually going the wrong direction by making leaps in the concept of general superstores instead of specialized ones. Of course in the western world there is ‘toys r us’, Radio Shack, Circuit City or even Home Depot; but that’s not the case here. Even in India, they started out with specialized retail i.e. Pantaloons for apparels, Crossword for books or even Subhiksha for mobile. Once they had tasted success with the specialized retail, they ventured into the more general format hypermarket scene with Big Bazaar or Hyper City. Although they not always got it right, Reliance Fresh being the example of choice here; they actually managed to nurture a weakling to a strong young boy (if not a complete man).

Question is? Why is Bangladesh going the other way???

Well just as always we are apparently the "smarter" kind; at least that’s what we take ourselves to be. The smart ones sitting in the boards of Rahimafrooz decided to copy the Wal Mart example, divide it by 10 (for size), 100 (for diversification of products) and launched it as Agora (a no brainer name for Bangladesh at least). The results were, well we all know it has roughly 6/7 (correct me if I am wrong) stores all across Bangladesh with nothing spectacular about the balance sheet either. Now for surely, the question arises, did they go all wrong since its been ages since the launch of their first flagship outlet in Rifles Square, Dhanmondi. Well no!

They definitely learn their lesson the hard way, cause with the launch of Quikfill...they definitely showed the industry what the "people with money" weren't being able to see...organized retail but in a specialized manner. Now everyday as I stand in the queue of Quikfill tejgaon (well not because its Quikfill but because its 5min away from my office) I wonder how could they have improved on their services. Although a CNG refueling station chain is a radically new concept in Bangladesh, Quikfill has hardly any USP to make a stand for itself. 24-hr power backup being the only suitable USP is actually applicable for many other large CNG stations on Dhk-Ctg highway and elsewhere. May be a loyalty card with redeemable discounts, baby Agora for spot purchases and of course a lubricants/vehicle necessities corner for the driving errands would have made it a better deal and more suited to the parent company, Rahimafrooz superstores :)

Aside for all the criticisms, in my modest view the next big thing in Bangladesh should be a pharmacy chain. Although ACI (a major pharma) is planning to go retail with a bang! I doubt if it’s anything to do with pharmacy retailing. With such a throbbing generic pharmaceuticals industry like ours and major players even exporting globally (i.e. Square, Beximco, Incepta); its just a matter of time someone blinks with the idea of retailing the nagging pharmacy industry of Bangladesh. The once mighty Lazz Pharma has long been dethroned by the likes of Prescription Aid and its time conglomerates make a move to occupy this growing industry.

My father, the ‘never interested in business’ guy, once told me...any business associated to the growing population will click in Bangladesh, be it transportation, food or even medicine. Well it’s been 3 years or so since he said that, and there is yet to organized player in the medicine-marketing segment.

So I call upon you all sleeping giants.... isn’t there anyone to step forward and make a merry of this untapped market? I am sure there are people, you just need the courage and vision to step in to the game :)...till that day comes, I will keep on wasting my neurons worrying over others money :)

---Sabih Ahmed

We have bought the media

Some 70 employees of Grameenphone, a private sector mobile phone company, yesterday alleged that they were victims of 'illegal mass retrenchment' by the authorities.
Addressing a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity in the city, they alleged that the authorities concerned sacked them illegally on December 31.
Barin Ghosh, one of the retrenched staff of the Grameenphone, said that Abdus Salam Bhuiyan, representative of the Human Resources Division of the company, asked some 70 staff of the Grameenphone to attend a meeting on December 31 when they were asked to sign on a white paper.
But, he said when they questioned as to why they would sign on a white paper without knowing about its contents then the official told them that they were sacked from service of the company.
Barin Ghosh added that they protested the action and told the official that they would express their grievances to the media convening a press conference. Then, he said the official told them that they would not get any benefit by letting the press know about their retrenchment as "We have bought the media by providing advertisement to the tune of lakhs of taka. So, your news would not be published or telecast in the print and electronic media".
Barin Ghosh informed that 1200 to 1500 staff of the company were sacked illegally over the past one year.
They alleged that the Grameenphone company was involved in various types of corruption including scandals relating to housing society, high officials' involvement in parallel business, construction of installations and mass retrenchment of its staff and illegal voice over internet protocol (VoIP) business.
The retrenched staff of Grameenphone demanded of the authorities concerned for reinstating the sacked staff members within seven days, handing over the management of the company under government supervision, constituting a neutral judicial investigation committee to investigate into the corruption of its high officials and their punishment.
They also urged the Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate into the internal corruption of the senior officials of the company. Otherwise, they warned that they would wage a legal fight against the action taken by the company against them.
The press conference was also addressed by Nargis Sultana Parvin, Sikandar Abu Zafar, Alok Kumar Biswas and Mohammad Mosharraf Hossain.

We all knew it was in effect, but how long did it take a newspaper to mention it? It was published in The Independent. Maybe people will start to rethink all their choices when its packaged in Grameenphone gift wrap.

Ethics in Modern Business

'Ethics' is a word rarely found in the dictionaries of our modern day entrepreneurs. The word gets lost between greed, vengeance and success. The recent 'Enron' of India scandal which brought one of the largest and reputed IT firm of Asia into its knees.

Founder of Satyam Ramalinga Raju and his brother Rama, also a former Satyam director, were arrested on charges including criminal conspiracy and forgery. Mr. Raju admitted that the firm has been falsifying its account. He said the company has exaggareted its account by almost $ 1 billion. The timing of such a scandal could not have been any better for India and the rest of the world. Just when people were loosing their trust on capital market, world economy was going into a long recession such flawed corporate governance has only hit the already wounded world economy. If you see some of the recent incidents which led to the fall of the free market economy, all of them has one common thing - 'Unethical practises' . The crash of the U.S housing market which led to the fall of Lehman Brother, Fannie and Mac, Bear Sterns all because some greedy executive wanted to take all the advantages of the housing boom that was going on not keeping in mind wheather or not the credits that has been given out will ever see the day of light. Consumers had very little to complain to the mortage companies free way of accepting almost everyone who has a minimum amount for a deposit to buy a house. Until, consumers failed , banks were stuck and big brothers such as Lehman Brothers , Bear Stearns had nothing but 'toxic assets' in their had. From then on it has been a domino effect in the Financial sector from banks, insurance to Private Equity companies has fallen victim. Just for those few on the top, their greed for more money and control of the market has put the housing bubble to burst and the people to default on their mortgage. Unethical practices has a long list all around the world for which the capital market, people's savings and the whole economy of a nation can come to a crisis. But in Bangladesh, very few or rather in small scale ones ever see the day of light. Excluding the Seimens bribe scandal which is a multi-national company and the reason it came out was because of a U.S anti-corrption and bribery inquery. I am sure if a thorough accounting and financial audit of large local firms which are listed in the capital market are done, many hidden skeletons will come out. The Securities of Exchange commision the watchdog of the capital market has done quite alot of things and has safeguards for the shareholders, but is it enough? Such watchdogs and safeguard policies were also in place in the U.S capital market and also India. Look how that turned out. Until the businessmen of Bangladesh does not act on Moral Ethics very few watchdogs or policies can stop them from keeping their shareholder in the illusion of inflated profits and high share prices. Look at the local commodity market, Steel market , Fertiliser market - inflated prices. All these can be achieved whena group of greedy businessmen decide to hold hands and take the market for high price ride and enjoy the profits off the poeple's hard work and pain. Business Ethics should be understood and taught at business school all around Bangladesh. Awareness of ethical practices should conducted at all the business organization and institutions.

I think Bangladesh's Corporate scandals ( financials ) are all hidden in the closet with a veil around it which reads loudly of their patritiosm and loyalty to the people. The examples of illegal activities by major telecom companies are still fresh in our mind. Those were just the tip of the iceberg. But will the whole iceberg ever come to light?