From diapers to disgrace

Evaly Chief Executive Officer Md Rassel has always been a hustler. He was highly ambitious and nurtured the dream of becoming an entrepreneur since his university days.

He wanted to build Evaly as one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the country by burning clients’ money.

But his strategy did not work. He and his business partner and wife Shamima Nasrin were remanded on Friday.

A local of Savar, he landed in the dormitory of Dhaka Residential Model College as a third-grader at the age of eight in 1991. He completed his higher secondary studies from there in 2001.

He planned to study at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and then go abroad for higher studies.

But he ended up studying statistics at Jahangirnagar University.

Because he studied at a boarding school, he did not have much freedom.

“But after college, I suddenly got a lot of freedom and did not know how to deal with it. It took a toll on my university admission preparations,” he said in one of his interviews.

“If I seriously studied after higher secondary, my story could have been different. I could have been working in a lab today instead of being an entrepreneur,” he said.

During his university days, he was involved in various extra-curricular activities. That is why it took him more than the usual time to complete his bachelor’s degree.

Besides, he organised an event management team comprising university students who worked freelance at various event management companies.

After graduation, he taught mathematics at Saifur’s from 2009 to 2011.

He then joined Dhaka Bank. On the side, he started the executive MBA programme at the Institute of Business Administration under the University of Dhaka and completed it in 2013.

“Alongside my bank job, I started trying different business ideas on a small scale. Renewable energy was trending at the time. I tried my hands at a solar light lamp business,” he said.

Joining a bank was part of his plan to better understand entrepreneurship.

“I thought working at a bank would give me some ideas about business and management. In fact, I learned many financial intricacies, including how to handle imports and other aspects of a business, during my banking career,” he added.

In 2016, he started working on his first venture, Kidz Diapers. He borrowed Tk 50 lakh from Standard Chartered Bank and spent that on expensive TV ads, marketing, and promotion.

“At that time, our marketing budget was three times our working capital. I must say it was not an ideal strategy for a new business. Fortunately, it worked for Kidz,” he said.

Kidz had only three salespeople. When the company’s sales were barely Tk 2 lakh, Rassel was spending Tk 15 lakh on operations. Besides, the promotional budget was almost five times the sales figure.

“We never hesitated to invest in building the brand because we knew that our ambition was to build a global brand. We had big plans. We never worried about the return from promotions and investments in building the brand,” he said.

After a year, in September 2017, he decided to venture into e-commerce. He wanted to use the Kidz strategy to grow that. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) told a press briefing on Friday Rassel had sold Kidz at Tk 1 crore to start Evaly.

He also planned to list Evaly on the stock exchange three years after its maturity or sell it to a multinational e-commerce giant along with its liabilities.

RAB said Rassel and his wife used to get a monthly salary of Tk 5 lakh each from Evaly. They used a luxurious car, which was maintained from the company’s fund.