Bangladesh Business, Mobility and Collaboration.

MAY 6, 2015: Bay Area Bangladeshi Association Reception. Congressman, Mike Honda and Ambassador Marcia Bernicat addressed the Bay Area Bangladeshi Association this week, speaking positively of the relationship and the importance of collaboration between the US and Bangladesh. Bangladesh's rich potential stems from business, mobility, and collaboration to over come the challenges of financial, political and educational weakness. 

During this event, an impressive presentation of the good will, work and business opportunity of Bay Area located businesses and nonprofit groups, showcased impressive and incredible examples of this importance in action.  Some of the key success stories highlighted: 

• Dewan Shuvo presented Chalo, a mobile based on-demand transportation and airport pickup service, similar to "Uber" but with increased driver security and mobility features, launched in Dhaka Bangladesh.  Its a story recently shared in Future Startup:  It is hard to get around in Bangladesh, and this mobility solution delivers a much needed relief for professionals in Bangladesh.   (http://www.chalo.com.bd/) 

• Chemists Without Borders presented an incredible Arsenic Education Project aimed at one of the largest humanitarian disasters where up to 77 million Bangladeshis are at risk from arsenic water contamination.  Chemist without Borders program is aimed at providing tests, educating and empowering students to take action for empowered action on the health and community issues around the importance of alternative sources of clean drinking water. 
• 50-100 children at each high school were educated and volunteered to take measurements at wells within their community. 6 wellsabove the official safe limit were identified and school officials were involved in raising funds to transition to a safe water supply.  
• (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/chemists-without-borders-bangladesh-arsenic-educ-n#home)  

•  SpaandanB presented on how they are building a Better Bangladesh for the disadvantaged. The mission of SpaandanB is to bring forth fundamental socio-economic change in the lives of the less advantaged people of Bangladesh by addressing the needs in the three major areas: Education, Health, and Humanitarian aid such as the Savar Tragedy Victim Rehabilitation and  providing a vetted list of reputable Nepal charitable aid organizations.

Ambassador Marcia Bernicat  spoke on the visibility and vibrancy of our US and Bangladesh partnership.  When talking about bilateral relations she said that people love to share about what a great place Bangladesh is, and how important the quality of cooperation and open communications are to how we work together.  

Asked about whether the "political tensions and issues are significant between the US and Bangladesh", Ambassador Bernicat emphasized most people are enthusiastic about what we do and how we do together, not just to help the US, but the world. She does not see the issues as negative, what is important is that we can have a meaningful dialogue on what concerns us.  It is important to talk about what is real, not just a list of positive attributes, but concerns we need to address to work together well.  So her assessment is that the level of dialogue is productive, and where there is bilateral communication, there is transparency, and that should not need to be perceived as negative.    

Ranked #12 in the top Global Mobile Communications Markets, Bangladesh is a rich and relatively under tapped Mobility market. Mobility is dominant, even the most rural areas across Bangladesh, where they is unreliable electrical infrastructure, there is the ability to keep in touch.  The population in Bangladesh is 160 million with over 75% of the population having mobile phone handset subscriptions!  (1)  

Mobile Services is a large and growing market with richly untapped potential in Bangladesh. Significant opportunity with financial, social, political, educational transformation,  and even health extending possibilities.  Mobility and Social Media can facilitate much change. Businesses and NGO's looking to make a difference should learn to leverage and educate effective social media networking and communications skills. Looking to be successful in Bangladesh,  the common rules of business apply those that gain advantage will be keenly aware of how to actively using the mobility and social media technology effectively, more than just to get in touch, but how to use it for effective business marketing, relationship management, advertising, and commercial advantage. 

• Financial potential through Mobility:  Today, 22% of Bangladesh's mobile population uses the mobile banking and financial payments. In Bangladesh, digital finance is still emerging, because of issues surrounding security, gender use, and literacy levels.  Secure financial mobility will become key, and SureCash, notably one of the most advanced mobile banking and payment platform recognized the opportunity and is investing in enabling technology for anyone in Bangladesh, with a mobile phone to safely deposit cash, send money, make purchases, and pay bills.  (2)  Investments in mobility, security, and governance are key to reliability and adoption to avoid recent Bangladeshi Cybersecurity Bank Breach Events. (3) 
• Social/Political/Educational Tranformation Mobility: A growing smartphone market at 30% of all new phones sold are affordable smart phones. 90% of access to the internet is exclusively due to wide availability of these smart affordable mobile phones. By 2011 Bangladesh internet growth exploded with over 900% internet users, bringing the total number of users to 5,501,609 (3.5% of the total population). (4) While use is being highly adopted, lack of familiarity, content, and literacy makes this very much an evolving opportunity for mobile advertising, social, political and educational communications via social media. 
• Healthcare Mobility: In Bangladesh, mobility leader, Grameenphone joined mHealth Coalition partnership (Mobiles4Health) to create resources and awareness of how to reduce maternal mortality, the biggest killer, second to that is neonatal deaths contributing to 57% fatalities under the age of five. The coalition aims to reach 500,000 new and pregnant mothers in 3 years.   Doctors Mobiles4Health use mobile phones to provide life saving care of expectant mothers during pregnancies, early warning signs of possible infant problems, family planning, and breast feeding best practices. They leverage mobile technology to deliver care remotely by phone, in addition to audio and text message educational healthcare resources.  (5) 

(Left to right- Dawn C Khan, Ambassador Marcia Bernicat, Taufiqul A Khan) - Photo Courtesy Tonmoy Mozumder

Dawn C Khan :   Linkedin   |  Twitter  (@dawnckhan)  | 

Footnotes: 

1. Mobiforge.com: May 16, 2014: "Global mobile statistics 2014 Part A: Mobile subscribers; handset market share; mobile operators"  

2. MarketWatch:  April 22, 2015: " Mobile Banking & Payment Operator SureCash Raises USD 7M Series Investment" 

3. eKantipur: April 21, 2015: "Digital Doom" 

4. Internet World Stats: Asia and Bangladesh

5. Telenor Group: "mHealth partnership supports mother-infant health"