Home ›› 06 Nov 2022 ›› Business Connect
Had she given in to the family traditions, where daughters were married off after the SSC exams, she would have been stuck inside the four walls at her husband’s house with no career.
She could have given up her dreams after the deaths of her loving father and husband left her heart broken. A series of fiascos in several of her business attempts over the years also did not help.
But she managed to pull herself back from the brink of a dead-end, went against all odds and created a name for herself in Bangladesh’s journey of empowering women, giving them economic freedom, and spreading the spirit of entrepreneurship with the help of Facebook and information and communication technology (ICT).
The woman at the heart of this story is Nasima Akter Nisha, the founder and president of the country’s largest women’s community engagement platform “Women and e-Commerce Forum (WE).” She is also the managing director (MD) of software company Reveries Corporation Ltd, co-founder and CEO of Hishabplus, and currently serves as the joint secretary of the e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB).
Started with the purpose of establishing an extensive network of female entrepreneurs around the country, WE has provided training to over 4 lakh women and connected around 13 lakh entrepreneurs through its platform.
Over the past three years, WE has organised over 100 training events across the country to nurture entrepreneurs. It currently has more than 4 lakh members in its Facebook group while over 11 lakh people follow its official Facebook page.
The forum is creating awareness about e-commerce in Bangladesh, tirelessly bringing together industry leaders, academia, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders and working together to solve various problems in this sector.
Breaking the barriers
Nisha was born in 1982. She grew up in a respected Haji family in Dhaka’s Banani. Her father Haji Shahabuddin was a well-known businessman and social worker in the area.
Talking to The Business Post, she said, “I was sixth of eight siblings and youngest daughter in my family. My family was conservative. In my family, daughters were always married off after the SSC exams. Being my father’s favourite, I somehow managed to convince him and got permission for higher studies.”
“I cleared SSC from Banani Model School, HSC from Adamzi Cantonment College, BBA from North South University and MBA from South East University. All those institutions were chosen because they were near my home and my family didn’t want me to go far,” she said.
“During BBA, I got married in 2003 to a businessman who lived in Banani. His family was also conservative, where female entrepreneurs were not welcome like many other families in Bangladesh.
“My struggles began after my father fell sick the same year. I could not save him even after I donated one of my kidneys to him. Before he died in 2005, he asked me to run his company Banani Property Development Limited which was working to develop the Banarupa Housing Project in Khilkhet. It was the first stepping stone in my career,” Nisha reminisced.
“I had no idea about running a business. The staff did not accept a woman as the MD. I tried to hold on for a while but decided to quit at one point to save the company my father built. Later, one of our corporate clients invested and took over the company,” she said.
In 2007-08, Nisha started a land business company called HS properties in Gazipur. “Soon, I learned that running an established business and starting a new one is completely different. At times, I used to face massive complications to reach land settlements. I shut down the company after struggling for a while.”
Later on, Nisha decided to chase her passion. “I was attracted to software and video games. I felt like I could do something great about these. At the time, smartphones had started becoming popular. I saw that millions of people were playing games online. I wanted to catch this user base as it was rather new in Bangladesh.”
“I launched software company Reverie Corporation Ltd in 2010 with 18 fresh IT graduates. Our office was at Haji Shahabuddin Mansion in Mohakhali. We developed some applications, including How to wear a Saree and Escape Boat. These were well received,” she said.
“Later, I recruited some IT professionals, including a CTO, but it was tough to hold on to them as they moved frequently to big companies. But I tackled it as best I could,” she told The Business Post.
In 2010, Nisha also bought a garment factory that was in the same building and named it Expotex. It was doing well at once with 300 employees working there.
The situation, however, started worsening after the Tazreen Fashion factory fire in 2012 and the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013. Nisha lamented, “Our factory was sealed off after the Accord Alliance imposed several strict rules on non-compliant small factories. I had to sell my flat to pay the employees’ salaries and close the factory.”
“I used to attend BASIS programs representing Reverie. In 2015, I got a call from e-CAB through that connection. At the time, the e-commerce sector was only at the beginning and needed nurturing. A nine-member executive team, including me, started working on that while building the association from the ground up,” she said.
“At e-CAB, I used to work with the government and corporations. We made people aware that e-commerce is a new sector and they can do business here,” she added.
The idea of WE
After failing in several business attempts, Nisha said she became frustrated and thought about quitting. “But I knew that I have learned a lot from my mistakes and failures. I didn’t know BGMEA, BASIS, etc. If I had a proper network at that time, I wouldn’t have struggled like that.”
She said, “While working at e-CAB, I realised that women entrepreneurs can do a lot of things by using technology, especially through e-commerce. I felt like doing something for them.”
“Meanwhile, I attended a UN meeting as an e-CAB member and a female entrepreneur representing Reverie. Before returning home, I also attended an event called “She Trade” in Turkey, where hundreds of women participated and showcased their software, IT solutions and businesses.
“I realised that there was no such network in Bangladesh and it should be done. But I didn’t know how I could get started,” she added.
Nisha said, “One day, I took my son to his school. There I saw that many of the talented mothers are homemakers with smartphones who have the potential to become entrepreneurs. To connect with women like them, I created a Facebook group named Women and e-Commerce (WE).
“I officially launched WE on October 24, 2017, at a Dhanmondi restaurant with my female colleagues from e-CAB and some friends, believing in a small start but dreaming big.”
Providing a platform
To build a support system, create educational opportunities and inspire female entrepreneurs to turn their craft into a business, WE has been a platform where meaningful discussions could occur and an exchange of ideas could take place.
Nisha said, “We started with offline training as no one was used to online training sessions then. The first training event was held at a small e-CAB training home for free.
“WE started with only four people at the Reverie office in Mohakhali. Soon, some female entrepreneurs joined us, which took the number of our members to 1,200 come in a month. I wanted it to become a single platform to solve the problems female entrepreneurs face across the country.”
She continued, “We registered weforumbd.com after then e-CAB president Rajib Ahmed and Bangladesh Innovation Forum President Ariful Hasan Opu insisted that we do. We trained 5,000 women entrepreneurs offline and online in a year. Our WE page on Facebook is now verified and our group has more than 4.6 lakh members.
“We also train 25 women offline every day at the Mohakhali office. So far, 4.5 lakh female entrepreneurs have received training since WE started arranging training sessions at the divisional cities.”
Since then, WE have equipped entrepreneurs with the education to overcome challenges and obstacles by hosting numerous relevant personal and professional development workshops, to nurture a tribe of entrepreneurs who can inspire generations of women around the country to build successful enterprises.
“Since September 2019, we started allowing posts of only those working with local products. I thought that the limited number of local producers may impede growth but they started joining in high numbers as many came out of their cocoons of shyness,” she said.
Turning point
Sharing her memories of another struggling time with The Business Post, Nisha said, “In November 2019, my husband Faisal passed away due to some wrong treatment. I was so depressed for several months that I even stopped working at WE. In my absence, Rajib sir continued WE activities from 2020.”
“When I managed to re-join, Covid lockdowns started. I started handling our online activities. It was a turning point for us. We also carried out awareness campaigns and urged people to not panic and not to spread negative things using our platform,” she said.
“During that time, we reached 1 lakh followers and had 30,000 start-ups connected with WE. We trained women entrepreneurs to explore their skills, be it for traditional products or daily commodities.
“During the 2020 lockdowns, we awarded 300 “Lakhopotis”, each of whom sells products worth more than Tk 1 lakh monthly. WE currently has coordinators in each of the 64 districts, and 80 more in 17 zones of Dhaka. We have also launched the “We Delivery” service with Ekshop,” said Nisha.
WE’s Facebook page gets visited by around 1.38 crore people every month. Through the page, WE members sell and make around 7,000 deliveries monthly, she added.
WE is not actually a selling platform or marketplace, she said. “Women entrepreneurs share what they can do and their interest in starting a business. We try to help them in any way we can.”
Every day, WE members buy and sell products among themselves and transactions of roughly Tk 1-3 crore takes place per month, she added.
WE members have also started exporting products to 15 countries, Nisha said. The platform has so far launched three chapters in Malaysia, Singapore and Japan. “If anyone there wants to order products from Bangladesh, they communicate with these local branches.”
At its Mohakhali office, WE have set up a co-workplace where female entrepreneurs can showcase their products, go live on Facebook and meet their clients.
“We invite female entrepreneurs to visit and receive training for 30 minutes every day so that they can receive direct knowledge about product marketing, handling customers, rules and regulations, etc.
WE organised the Women e-Commerce Entrepreneurship Summit 2022 in Dhaka where entrepreneurs discussed potentials, problems and solutions of e-commerce.
Role of e-commerce
As the only ICT sub-sector, e-commerce has seen the highest participation from women over the past few years and they are already playing a critical role in this sector.
The majority of online shoppers in Bangladesh are women. Women’s clothing and fashion accessories are the top-selling items in e-commerce, followed by electronic gadgets.
But unfortunately, the businesses of many of these entrepreneurs are not sustainable as they lack the necessary knowledge and training, Nisha said.
WE addresses the needs of these female entrepreneurs and its goal is to empower them and help them continue their businesses, she said.
“There is certainly a lot of room for growth in the local e-commerce sector, which is likely to grow more in the next 10 years. So, any initiative can have a bright future. Having said that, we have to think about long-term investment,” she told The Business Post.
She said that large e-commerce companies are still reluctant to invest in the made in Bangladesh products. For example, there is no online marketplace yet only for local products.
“The biggest challenge in dealing with a fast-growing platform like WE is its maintenance. We have to deal with entrepreneurs who don’t have a basic level of understanding, knowledge and information about online business. Most of them don’t even know that they need to buy a domain [website address] before opening a Facebook page for their business,” she said.
She continued, “WE is a non-profit organisation and still does not have enough funds to carry out its activities through this large platform. We have some ambitious training and education plans but don’t have the skilled manpower and funding to implement them yet.”
WE will be a big platform for e-commerce business in the upcoming days. Establishing an entrepreneurship culture will decrease the unemployment problem. Many women who had lost their desire to build a business career are now doing f-commerce with help from WE, Nisha said.
“This platform is set to become the largest goldmine of Bangladeshi products very soon. Through e-commerce, businesses can provide any kind of service, like delivering food, medicine, groceries and clothing.
“And my dream is to take WE to the international level and make it the top e-commerce platform for women and local products,” she said while beaming.
