Home ›› 26 Mar 2023 ›› Back

Intellecap’s Bangladesh initiative will raise $250m by 2030

26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 | Update: 26 Mar 2023 00:10:38
Intellecap’s Bangladesh initiative will raise $250m by 2030

Now is the time for Bangladesh and there is a growing appetite to exponentially scale economic success backed by resilient GDP growth, says Managing Director of India-based Intellecap Jayesh Bhatia in an exclusive interview with The Business Post’s Shamim Ahmed.

Tell us about yourself and what you are doing now.

With more than 29 years of experience in natural resource management and rural development, I am now the managing director of Intellecap, one of the four concerns of Sankalp Forum in India.

I previously worked with a range of organisations and institutions in India. I scaled up successful pilot schemes across a range of areas, including natural resource management (NRM); water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); and rural livelihood.

I also worked extensively with United Nations (UN) organisations, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Department for International Development (DFID), the World Bank, and India’s state government departments as well as ministries of the central government.

I led and coordinated multi-cultural and multi-agency teams in delivering complex assignments to various donors in India, Southeast and South Asia, and Africa. With post-graduate degrees from the prestigious Indian Institute of Forest Management and the University of Oxford, I also established and scaled NR Management Consultants India Pvt Ltd.

Tell us about the organisation you work for.

Let me first introduce Sankalp Forum. It is an organisation that brings its proven success across the Global South to facilitate the creation of an environment of knowledge, capital, and networks for entrepreneurial minds. Over the past 14 years, Sankalp, through its 29 summits, showcased and discovered more than 2,000 entrepreneurs and connected them to over 1,000 investors.

Secondly, Intellecap has a mission to enable ecosystems by channelling capital to create and nurture a sustainable and equitable society. It has emerged as a strategic thinker, problem solver, and a leading voice in the social development sector, especially in augmenting livelihoods for underserved communities.

What is the objective of your visit to Bangladesh?

Now is the time for Bangladesh. Backed by resilient gross domestic product (GDP) growth and coupled with a rise in the youth population, there is a growing appetite to exponentially scale economic success here.

It is against this background of prosperity that Sankalp Forum, one of the world’s largest conveners of impact entrepreneurship and sustainable development goals (SDGs), has come to Dhaka to catalyse the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and accelerate development toward Vision 2041.

We have introduced Intellecap’s Bangladesh Green Enterprises Ecosystem Initiative. It will raise $250 million for 1,000 impact enterprises by 2030 and help create 10,000 jobs in the country.

What will you need to work conveniently here?

Intellecap needs partnerships with philanthropic institutions, development finance institutions, and private sector institutions to channel financial capital to small, medium, and large enterprises so that they can be pro-people and planet positive.

We also emphasised Intellecap’s engagement with the government initiatives and offered to bring in experiences from India to help achieve the Smart Bangladesh Vision 2041 championed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

What is the focus of the Bangladesh Green Enterprises Ecosystem Initiative?

Intellecap will keep an eye mostly on a number of areas. Renewable energy (RE) is one of them as solar energy has huge impact and investment potential. Solar power potential makes up 50 per cent of the RE target for 2041. With 42 million square feet of rooftop space, the readymade garment and textile sectors hold the highest potential for producing and using solar energy.

However, key financing barriers to renewable energy development remain, including a lack of long-term financing for RE projects, limited due diligence capacity, the lack of a functioning syndication market, and limited foreign currency financing capacity.

×