An economist turns tech giant

Science was the arena of his academic concentration till Higher Secondary level, but his interest was drawn to economics for tertiary education with a vivid dream to become an economist and carry out research for the country.

The dream was translated into reality for a short spell to the life of a visionary who is no one but the legendary business figure and tech giant Fahim Mashroor – a name that requires virtually no introduction, rather drives every inquisitive mind to dig deep into how he made a name for himself.

In pursuance of his dream, Fahim joined a corporate primarily as an economist after completion of his studies.

“Everything was quite good and I was doing well but something slowly dawned on me. I was lured by my knack for doing something different coming out of the cocoon of conventional method of breadwinning and leading life,” said Fahim.

Deeply passionate and foresighted about technology, the visionary started developing an online database for helping students and economic researchers, but it was quite difficult to make the digital platform economically viable.

The venturous story dates back to late 1990s when the project was shelved but the entrepreneur did not back down, he reposed his firm belief in technology that he envisioned, and his idea held water.

Fahim Mashroor is well-recognized as a tech-giant in the country’s online job portal and e-commerce.

Born and brought up in the capital Dhaka, Fahim hardly had visits to his ancestral land in Cumilla district.

His father was a government employee based in Dhaka. As a result, Fahim’s early schooling was in several institutions including Wills Little School, BAF Shaheen School & College, and Ideal High School from where he passed Secondary School Certificate (SSC). Later, he studied science at Notre Dame College.

Fahim graduated in Economics from Dhaka University and post-graduation from there. Later, he also obtained his MBA from IBA of the same university in 1998.

Following his graduation, Fahim started his career as a corporate economist in Beximco Group with a consolidated remuneration of Tk 15,000. He worked for Beximco for a brief spell of only one year extending to 1999.

After leaving Beximco, he joined a World Bank project focusing on export development only for three months. Though the WB offered him position as an economist, it did not interest him much and so he left it.

The dreamer was planning for something that will put a direct impact on peoples’ life and their economies, thanks to the concurrent advent of cyberspace.

He made the best use of internet technology to turn his vision into reality, creating economic database online and named it bdec.org elaborated by Bangladesh Economic Chronicle.

It was much more an economic magazine where scholarly write-ups and opinion on economic affairs were aimed to publish along with macro-economic data. Two of his IBA mates partnered him in this initiative.

The team set the target to reach teachers, students, scholars and researchers as their readers and writers but it was too difficult for them to make gain.

“We thought it would be commercially viable but within a short span of time, it appeared that this would be tough to stand profitable in a country like ours. So we gave it up after 1-2 years,” recalled Fahim while narrating his early attempts.

Being failed in his first go, Fahim didn’t dilly-dally, just got on with redesigning his plan and setting a renewed strategy.

In early 2000, IBA graduate Fahim remained unemployed in a sense. He pored over something new which will be entirely tech-based and which might have instant demand and grow sharply in future.

Therefore, he planned to use technology as a tool to ease the lives of millions of educated youth who could find ways of life. So, Fahim hit upon a plan to create a digital platform for the job seekers. It was a win-win both for him and the job hunters. In December 2000, a new chapter dawned on his life when he along with two other friends started bdjobs.com.

“As the young educated are always in frantic search for job info, they will continue to search the website, and it will be a great opportunity for me to do business,” Fahim said of his early thought.

“From then came the idea of developing bdjobs.com.”

When Bdjobs.com kicked off its journey, it had no office, Fahim recalled, saying that his bedroom was his workstation equipped with two computers and other internet tools.

Emergence of bdjobs.com

With its formal inauguration at British Council on Fuller road on the Dhaka University campus, bdjobs kicked off operation in December 2000.

Hailing from middle-income families, Fahim and his teammates had less money to invest into their venture primarily.

“We could put more money into it but we didn’t as we knew that it would take time to get returns,” described Fahim.

“Each of our seven-member team contributed Tk 3,000 to Tk 4,000 as monthly investment totaling Tk 30,000 to Tk 40,000 a month. We continued it for three years.”

From early 2001, the tech-savvy entrepreneurs initiated services free of cost. It was just a media to help companies connect with job seekers, but companies did not prefer bdjobs for job advertisements, rather they took recourse to mainstream media like Ittefaq and Sangbad.

“Both job applicants and recruiters were not interested in using our website. They relied on the traditional media. In a bid to popularise our site, we started collecting newspaper clips of those ads and ran job information for our portal,” explained Fahim.

“Our target was to make a single platform where people can get all ads available. We kept doing this for more than three years. We went to companies for their advertisements. Some were convinced but at a cost lower than the conventional rate of advertising.”

“But things started to turn around. Recruiters started approaching us slowly, and we demanded affordable price and committed to promote their jobs.”

Finally the bdjobs.com started earning revenue after 2003. Among the giant companies, Linde Bangladesh Limited, published its advertisements against Tk 1,500 to Tk 2,000, which was then the biggest amount for running any commercial.

Then recruiters got to pay around Tk 300 for running an advertisement on bdjobs. Now the advertisement costs Tk 3,500.

Finally bdjobs got physical address, saw faster growth

After 2003, bdjobs took a 700 square feet office on the 9th floor at DBBL Building in Karwanbazar. Two employees were hired. Fahim had to do almost everything from programing to data entry as he was the only full-timer among other co-founders.

In the next successive years after 2004, they witnessed 100-150 per cent growth of both revenue and profit. Bdjobs started picking up revenues from banner advertisement and Google ad sense after Fiscal Years 2013 and 2014.

After 2015, they came out of the city and graduate-centric job information as 30 per cent are non-graduate jobs. To make it easier for non-graduate jobs ranging from security guard to cook, the company launched Bangla service, making it now a bilingual portal.

With regular updated job information, bdjobs is receiving annual revenue of around Tk 20 crore.

Its daily page view ranges from 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh totaling 40 million monthly. More than 32 lakh résumés and 25,000 corporate accounts have so far been published. More than 25,000 employers in the country have hired over 3,50,000 professionals at different levels for their organisations through bdjobs.com service. Over 200 people are currently working for the biggest job management site.

The online job platform included Australian job website ‘Seek International’ with one third of its ownership. ‘Seek International’ has a wide range of action areas worldwide including Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and Thailand.

Along with the job information, Bdjobs.com also provides the job seekers training to help them prepare for and find jobs. It also creates an opportunity to earn from the training.

Asked about his success strategy, Fahim attributed his passion, dedication and planning and above all his leadership skill to his venture that brought growth to the company as well as in the industry.

In 2015, Fahim and his partners made investment in digital marketplace and established ajkerdeal.com, a sister concern of bdjobs.com.

Later, they converted ajkerdeal.com into a full-fledged e-commerce entity so that people can buy and sell products online. They are facilitating making money by common people.

The creation of the digital marketplace aimed at providing people opportunity to sell products produced individually. As of today more than 20,000 merchants are working with the platform across the country.

On the other hand, ajkerdeal.com created direct employment for 250 people while 500 are indirectly involved in delivery process.

Initially, the investment was Tk 3 to Tk 4 crore, which stood at Tk 15 to Tk 20 crore now.

“Our daily orders are around 15,00 to 2000 and it is about 50,000 on average per month,” said Fahim.

As the success of online platform is very much linked with the proper delivery system and fund collection, he decided to invest in delivery services.

Later in 2020, Fahim launched his delivery service business named Delivery Tiger with a considerable amount of investment.

“To serve our consumers and ensure safe and smooth delivery of their products, we established the delivery entity that gave us a good leverage,” said Fahim.

He explained that if a villager chooses a T-shirt online worth Tk 150 and places order for it, it will cost them another 150 for delivery cost.

People don’t pay in advance for their purchase, rather they prefer cash payment on delivery.

He said merchants receive payments after one or two weeks; the existing system is not welcomed by everyone, and they lose interest in the online system.

“So, we decided to work much on it for an effective delivery. Tiger Delivery can deliver products at Tk 50 to Tk 60, which usually costs about Tk 150. While merchants can receive payment the day they deliver products to their customers.”

“We have been successfully doing the job since last year. Successful in a sense, we managed to contribute to the economy with around 1,000 employments in our venture.”

Also read: Shakti Foundation, Delivery Tiger launch ‘e-Loan’ for SMEs

From a tech entrepreneur, Fahim emerged as a leader not just of his own company but for the country’s information technology sector as well.

Starting as an executive member of the apex body of tech entrepreneurs, he served the BASIS as its president for 2012-13.

Fahim founded BASIS Institute of Technology Management (BITM).

Asked about his suggestions for the newcomers, he said: “I have set some benchmarks for my company to operate that brought success. Those are fairness, accountability and transparency. For newcomers in tech business, these are the words from me.”

Future plan

The business tycoon observed that Bangladesh has a good number of young people, of which, more than 65 per cent is of working age between 15 and 64. This demographic dividend is one of the main strength of the country.

On the other hand, Bangladesh has a vibrant SME sector, which contributes 25 per cent to the country’s GDP.

“We have responsibilities to SMEs. The main problems of startups or small businesses are access to finance. To utilise the power of young population and accelerate the economic growth, the SME sector could be a great tool.”

“We have some weaknesses in the system. We have not enough online-based technology to accommodate small investors,” according to Fahim.

He held that bKash, a Fin-tech startup, has changed the landscape of the country’s digital financial services and investment in tech-based startups, and the SMEs could be a game changer.

“What we need is build up infrastructure and develop financial products so that small businesses or start-ups get more loans.”

“We have plans to contribute to Fin-tech where our target people would be frontier people -- poor villagers who want to invest in their economic ventures, but are short of cash. The one who is earning Tk 1 can earn Tk 2 if financial technology can be applied and reachable to others,” described the visionary.