Home ›› 22 Aug 2022 ›› Front
When a significant portion of business graduates are running after government jobs there are others who rather prefer business to jobs.
This section of business graduates is nowadays wants to become private entrepreneurs.
Not only the business graduates but also the people from science and arts backgrounds are coming to business as development and technological advancement of the country have opened up new vistas for them.
Despite doing business remains challenging for different reasons including lengthy bureaucratic processes, limited access to loan and weak infrastructure they are coming up with new ideas.
Sometimes, support from the government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), development partners and the private sector are also helping them become entrepreneurs.
Consequently, Bangladesh has witnessed an immense progress in the area of the startup of new businesses over the last several years and earned foreign investment thanks to the innovation of the youth.
This section of people considered the government jobs safe while a private job less attractive.
This is why they prefer business to jobs aiming to become rich or famous and the culture is gradually gaining traction among most of the business graduates.
The overall development of the country has created manifold opportunities for young graduates in many sectors including e-commerce, information and communications technology (ICT), service Industry, agro business, export-import business and in many retail businesses.
Employees have to follow tough rules and regulations while there is lack of freedom in doing job. But the young graduates love freedom and tend to develop their own business.
As a result, entrepreneurs are willing to take up challenge of risk of doing business despite having opportunity and quality to find a job.
Kazi Ridwan Ahamed, a recent graduate of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Northern University of Business & Technology, Khulna, has developed a business within a year after his graduation.
His innovative startup SCOOT is now the enlisted startup of ICD Division under the Idea Project.
Ridwan said he used to prefer implementation of his own business idea rather than jobs. “I started electronic bike sharing pilot project in Khulna in January 2021 and started to provide service in February 2021.”
In just one and a half years of the pilot project his market demand grew significantly and now he is planning to spread his project in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet very soon.
He is manufacturing e-bike in his factory that is generating employment for many. Currently he has more than 36 e-bikes.
Zarin Tasneem graduated in 2017 from East West University. She is involved in producing beauty care products.
This is why she did not look for job and launched Sarin’s Store, a brand that manufactures homemade beauty products with all natural and locally grown ingredients.
At the very beginning she came to the market with two products including face mask and an oil made from family recipe which spread pretty fast and friends and family encouraged her to market the products.
Now she is supplying more than 30 products and annual sales volume is more than Tk2 million, she added.
With the initiative of the government and academia the entrepreneurship is booming in Bangladesh.
The government announced to reduce the turnover tax for startups from 0.70 per cent to 0.10 per cent in the financial year 2022-23 and also proposed to exempt startups from submitting all types of reports except income tax return.
Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and Dhaka University’s Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship Center started implementing a USD 7.5 million project for young entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.
The project titled ‘Capacity Building of Universities in Bangladesh to Promote Youth Entrepreneurship’ was inaugurated on 5 December 2021 as part of DU’s centenary celebrations.
The Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship Centre of Dhaka University Executive Director Md Rashedur Rahman said the culture to prefer business to job has already started to gain traction.
Startups boom in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is one of the fastest developing countries in the world with an impressive annual GDP growth rate of around 6.5 per cent over the last decade. There are more than 1,200 active startups, with 200 new ones joining the industry annually in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has drawn global attention in recent times for its remarkable socio-economic progress as reflected in the startup ecosystem.
The report styled ‘Bangladesh Startup Ecosystem 2021-22: Coming of Age’ has recently been prepared and launched by Light CastlePartners, a local management consultant.
The report says it attracted a total investment of $505 million in 2021 and in the first half of 2022 it was $498 million from global investors. The local startups have also created employment for over 1.5 million, said the report.
Rizwan Rahman, President of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce & Industry said many young graduates are shifting their focus on business. They are involved in e-commerce, ICT, service and software freelancing.
The tendency to offer job than doing job is growing more among the young generation. They want to be employers. The Bangladesh Bank is offering facilities for the entrepreneurs which is also inspiring entrepreneurship in Bangladesh, he added.
Expansion of business, ICT education
Education business is tremendously expanded in Bangladesh. Most of the public universities and private universities provide education based on models and materials developed in the west.
The young entrepreneurs are coming up with some extraordinary ideas to ease life and provide immediate services.
According to the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) annual report of 2020, there are about 4.7 million students studying at undergraduate and postgraduate level in 50 public and 107 private universities around the country, excluding madrasas and technical institutes.
Out of those students 19.81 percent are in business administration.
Young entrepreneurs are very active in e-commerce sector where the study of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) is contributing significantly.
According to a recent study of Asian Development Bank (ADB) around 20,000 fresh Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) students are graduating every year in Bangladesh. The UGC said 7.82 percent of the students are from engineering and technical backgrounds.
More graduates, fewer jobs
Bangladesh is producing around 3.5 lakhs of graduates each year and the number is significantly growing year on year. But the job market is not lucrative as there are not enough jobs for all of the graduates.
As a result, many of the graduates have to struggle to find a better job even after having a higher education from renowned universities or colleges. Many frustrated graduates commit even suicide after failing to find jobs.
According to the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) annual report of 2020, some 2, 90,246 students passed graduation or post-graduation from 46 public universities in 2020 while 65, 115 students from 107 private universities.
But a large section of them has remained unemployed.
According to Bangladesh Employment and Labor Market Watch 2018, youth unemployment rate in the country is the highest among graduates with a tertiary degree.
In a recent report Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) stated that more than one-third of the total youth labor force in Bangladesh with higher education is unemployed.
As per the report of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2018, Bangladesh was the second out of 28 countries in the Asia-Pacific region in the highest level of educated unemployment rate.
The unemployment situation is even worse for those who graduates from National University as 66 percent of them remains unemployed, according to a BIDS study.
Academician Syed Manzoorul Islam said the current education system is just producing graduates and there is lack of job-related department that developed in the western world 100 years ago. The system of education must be changed to boost job market. It is not enough to produce graduates only they must be made efficient as per the demand of the industry and world competition.
