Sheikh Hasina Technology Park drives southwestern region

Economic enormity is climbing up rapidly as the country's digital landscape goes through an envious technology-ridden environment. This has been possible as the government has adopted a process driven approach to transform many places of the country into technology hubs to cope with the changing global economic scenario.

Towards making people economically solvent Bangladesh faces a historic opportunity to see Sheikh Hasina Software Technology Park emerging as an information technology (IT) hub in the southwestern region of the country.

This inspirational technological venture has created a congenial environment for technology-based work as it was built in 2017 at a cost of Tk 283 crore.

The IT park makes the area more conducive to IT sector growth and also Bangladesh one of the country's foremost IT hubs.

It is hemmed with eye-catching greenery and lakes and has created a room for a large number of entrepreneurs and 2000 employments, facilitating working on software development, freelancing and outsourcing, call centres, and research and development.

According to the park authorities, a total of 56 entrepreneurs have already invested in the park while 46 are currently working, creating employment for 2,000 people.

Rakib Hasan, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Jashore IT, is operating his outsourcing firm with 22 employees from his park office, which is working with the USA, Canada and the UK based clients. His company in the last fiscal year earned remittance worth of around Tk 2 crore.

He said the infrastructure facilities like Sheikh Hasina Software Technology Park basically created a work environment for the entrepreneurs and helped launching new startups.

Zahir Iqbal, chairman of the Abacus Soft BD Limited and president of Jashore Startup, is also operating his company from the technology park where his company gives training on ICT to the youths and develops software on freelancing basis.

"I have two offices in the park. We work with the training part and software-based IT products. We already have imported some IT products to the USA and India," he said.

The Joy Bangla Youth Award and the United Nation Volunteer Award winning youth entrepreneur Zahir said, "Due to the setting up of such infrastructure after the name of the Prime Minister, we have marched much forward. We are proud of it as many entrepreneurs and startups like me took space here and are gathering IT related knowledge under the government initiative".

The technology park was built on 12.12 acres of land at Bejpara area of the district town as per Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina commitment she made during inauguration of Jashore Science and Technology University on December 27, 2010.

The Prime Minister, later, inaugurated the park named after her on December 10 in 2017. The park has been featured with the country's second data center called 'Disaster Recovery Data Center' with a capacity of three petabyte, providing an important backup to the country's first National Tier IV Data Center – in Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City (BHTC) in Gazipur.