Tapping into our techie potential

Startup Dhaka along with Grameenphone organized the Grameenphone Demo Day inside the vast auditorium of GP House, on May 12. The event showcased twelve tech savvy startup companies in front of successful entrepreneurs, companies and top management executives from Grameenphone.
The program kicked off with welcome note from Zakia Zerin, Grameenphone's Head of Social Media, and Mustafizur Khan, the founder of Startup Dhaka. It was followed by a lightning round with 2 minute-long presentations from the twelve diverse startups:

Tapstar
An online gaming app firm, which makes various games for Android. You can find their games on Google Play.

Lightcastle Partners
An analytics, planning and intelligence firms. It focuses on businesses in emerging markets.

Loosemonkies
An online Human Resources/Jobs firm. It serves as a personalized profile driven job portal.

Monasa Learning Centre
Monasa is an after school learning center for children where learning is innovative and fun.

Team Engine OCR
A firm building a Bangla OCR (Optical Character Recognition software), which makes Bengali documents searchable online.

Singularity's Lifeline
This can help people seek blood donors via mobile apps.

Bongo
Bongo provides access to Bengali movies and TV shows, via a Netflix-like service as 3G spreads across the country.

City Scope
A real time Dhaka city traffic data system, which uses Google maps, and around the clock statistics.

Dhaka Beats
This startup is devoted to keeping tabs on events happening across Dhaka city. They cover all sorts of events and provide information, venues and dates to customers.

All the presentations had a brief Q and A session, which all startup representatives handled confidently. After the showcase and brief coffee break, the event was back on with a discussion panel. Alongside Fayaz Taher and Mustafizur Khan (event moderators and founders of Startup Dhaka), were panelists Sana and Sayma Rahman of Grameenphone, Sajid Rahman (an angel investor with a background in banking) and Shabab E. Khan from Bangladesh Enterprise Institute.
The speakers spoke at length about entrepreneurship in Bangladesh, its exciting prospects, obstacles, and the business environment. Ms. Sayma and Mr. Sana brought forth the prevailing issue of poor internet connectivity across the country and how alleviating this could open up doors for people from all walks of life, while Shabab E. Khan discussed the difficulties budding entrepreneurs face due to legislature and policies, and urged them to seek expert guidance. Fayaz Taher's word of advice was that everyone in the room should build strong networks and communities throughout the country. Director Strategy & Project Management Office at Grameenphone, Erlend Prestgard, announced that they are looking to work with companies that create content or technological services in the areas of Agriculture, Health & Education.
Samad Miraly (co-founder of Startup) ended the event with a concluding note about Grameenphone, encouraging them to increase their participation as “enablers” rather than just a corporate powerhouse, and to aid startup businesses. The event was brief, punctual and very engaging. It made its point loud and clear – that coders and entrepreneurs could solve local problems using technology to propel Bangladesh forward to a middle income country. GP Demo Day left no page unturned in proving that Bangladesh has an extremely versatile pool of talent among its youth, and that there is plenty more to tap into.
To find out more about Startup Dhaka and its startup activities, please visit www.startupdhaka.org.