Shaer On Business

Catching up: recap on visits to Europe and onward

On May 20, 2013 / Shaer on Business / Leave a comment

A lot has been going on since we last updated the blog.

A new year has been rolled out, we visited Denmark, Netherlands, Germany and again Netherlands.

We met the great team like Better Collective, who hosted us in Denmark…

In Copenhagen at the office of Better Collective

I met Mohamad at a conference in Amsterdam. I presented a simple concept there: Challenges of outsourcing:

Mohamed wrote me with his future project. Fuad wrote back (I was in Saudi Arabia at that time performing Hajj).

We got the great project HorseCount. More importantly we met a great person — Eli Westerlaken. He flew to Dhaka with a week’s notice just to kick start the project:

Eli with the team Nascenia

Janis, Camilla and Thomas from Better Collective visited us in Bangladesh. We did not give them a polished hospitality — we lured them to the largest mangrove jungle on earth, inhabited by predator Royal Bengal tigers! They looked happy anyway:

Nascenia and Better Collective in the forest of Sundarban

You can visit our FB photo album to have a closer look to the jungle and its visitors.

They presented about their team to us on their way back:

BC presenting about themselves to Nascenia

BC is presenting about themselves to Nascenia

We presented them a little something, just to compensate mosquito bites near Sundarban, and hopefully to remember us:

Nascenia presenting BC visitors in Bangladesh

I and Fattah went to Hanover to attend CeBIT. We had a booth there.

Nascenia at CeBIT, Hanover

On the way back we visited Oudenbosch (Netherlands). Eli was kind to host us in his farmhouse:

Eli (HorseCount), Fattah and Shaer at an Afghani Restaurant at Oudenbosch

HorseCount team and Nascenia were having a dinner at an Afghani restaurant. Thanks to Eli’s hospitality.

A lot of people joined our team. We almost doubled in last six months. We are a team of 30 now! And growing. We need to update their pics to our site.

Robiul won Nascenia award in of Khulna this year:

Robiul, Khulna University afer getting scholarship from Nascenia

Robiul, Khulna University looks happy getting scholarship from Nascenia

We have started to develop iPhone and Android app. Started to work on front-end-design.

We have been featured on website ITC (International Trade Centre).

Looking forward to a great time ahead.

Looking forward to our third anniversary of Nascenia this July.

Nascenia won as a Red Herring Asia 2012 Finalist

On September 24, 2012 / Blog, Shaer on Business / Leave a comment

Red Herring is a technology business magazine. It also award 100 technology organizations each of America, Europe and Asia. To my knowledge this is the most well-known and prestigious technology award Asia-wide. This year we were considered to participate in the contest. Red Herring assess technology companies with the criteria of innovation, profitability, ROI etc.

In 2012 Nascenia won as one of the finalists.

We are invited to Hong Kong to present our company. 100 will be selected among the contestants. We believe we had a very good chance. Unfortunately some of other conferences and business in Europe coincides with this. So, our board decided to let go the opportunity.

Hey! we are still a finalist! See that on their website.

Maybe you will see us among the 100 in coming years.

Cheers!

Apu Saha of University of Khulna Won the First Scholarship by Nascenia

On March 17, 2012 / Blog, Shaer on Business / Leave a comment

The first receiver of our scholarship program is Mr. Apu Saha. He is a student of the 11th batch of CSE discipline in Khulna University. He is studying in his first term, in the first year.

The VC of Khulna University, on behalf of Nascenia, hands over a PC (as scholarship) to Apu Saha

We hope he will make the best use of the personal computer that he received as the scholarship. We wish him all the success.

Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

On October 29, 2011 / Shaer on Business / 6 Comments

Ruby on Rails started its journey worldwide in 2005. It was introduced to Bangladesh in mid 2007 by a US based company which later became Code71.

Let me give a little more overview on Ruby on Rails (RoR) in Bangladesh.

Companies worked in Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh the first notable application that was made of RoR is Scrumpad. It is developed by Code71 and was developed in RoR 1.2. It was deployed on IIS first, and later moved to Apache running in Amazon EC2. Starting with a three persons company in two years Code71 became a 17 persons company. Quite a few web applications were built by this team. With core focus on Ruby Code71 worked in .Net and php too. code71, however, dissolved its offshore development center in Bangladesh in mid 2011 to become a single-product-focused company.

Three ex-employees from Code71 formed Nascenia when former shut down its operation in Bangladesh. Nascenia focused on Ruby on Rails, too. At the time of writing this blog, more than 20 applications are developed by Nascenia in RoR. The projects are developed by its customers in USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Australia and even India. They also built a couple of products for Bangladeshi market, one of them is bdipo.com which received massive popularity.

bdipo, a IPO related site built on Ruby on Rails

www.bdipo.com a popular Bangladeshi site built by Ruby on Rails

Another company that came to my notice working on RoR was TekSymmetry, which was later acquired and named as Tasawr Interactive. Tasawr among many other things, still works or like to work on RoR, I believe. And I know that Grameen Solutions and Vantage Labs work or worked on Ruby on Rails. There is a product company, Akhoni, who develops its product in Ruby on Rails. Apart from these, there are a handful developers who are experts in RoR, but either they are in other technologies now, or work as a freelancers.

Communities of Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

There is a Google group for Ruby on Rails developers in Bangladesh. Currently there are 73 members in it, not very active though. Recently a newcomer, Erfan with all his enthusiasm, started a Facebook group; the group is still forming.

Websites built in Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi live web products developed in Ruby on Rails are: bdipo.com, Akhoni.com, khadok.com, travelobd, khanacademybangla.com

khadok.com, a Bangladeshi site built on Ruby on Rails

khadok.com, a Bangladeshi site for food lovers, built by Ruby on Rails

Among these bdipo.com is the most popular web application developed in Ruby on Rails. This site is developed and owned by Nascenia. There are a couple more those can be ranked in the top SaaS products in Bangladesh.

PS: Most of the information above is based on our best knowledge; please enlighten us by commenting below, if you know better. I am sure some of you do.

Entrepreneurship is Like Painting: Interview of Richard Branson

On July 16, 2011 / Shaer on Business / 1 Comment

Here is the bullet point take away from the 40 min rendezvous with Sir Richard Branson.

Entrepreneurship is an art. Painting on a huge canvas, filling up the blanks and combining the bits and pieces. Similar thought was expressed by Mohammad Yunus recently. He said there is no legal relationship among the different concerns named as Grameen and founded by him. He just had to build different ventures to fill the gaps. And here Richard founded 300+ businesses under Virgin group to fill in the blanks on his canvas. A ‘wow’ is even an under statement!
Entrepreneurs are not managers, save Steve Jobs. Entrepreneurs should be good at delegation, and move on to grabbing the next opportunity.
The cheapest way of promotion is to make sure you have a good product to talk about.
The inspiring way of promotion is the Chairman to talk about the product from the forefront! Who does it better than Richard Branson and Steve Jobs?
It is an easier and faster way of knowing people in a fun environment than in formal meetings. Joe Polish mentioned form Peter Drucker: “Either you are working, or you are in meeting.” That’s bold! Richard said that he makes sure his employees have fun in work and after. By the way “don’t drink and fly a plane” rule applies to Virgin Airlines, too. No wonder!
Creating business is one of the best ways to solve problems in the modern world. So do think Mohamamd Yunus (Social Business and Creating World without Poverty) and NR Narayana Murthy (A better India: A Better World). For some of the issues, however, business might not work. That’s where Virgin Unite plays role for Richard. For Yunus Social Business works.
Prepare for the worst. That’s the most common preparations startups fail to make. 8 out of 10 fails, remember? Keep and exit strategy handy. Be flexible to sway from your initial plan.
Use modern communication to stay close to your dear ones. That means, stay close physically to your family, and stay connected to your business using technology; as much as is practical. That’s the secret recipe form Richard for work-life balancing.

That’s it! It meant to be bullet point, right?

In case you are hungry for more, go ahead watch the the full video. You might have a different set of take away. If you do, share them on the comment box.

Richard Branson with Marie Forleo, Joe Polish and Yanik Silver on Necker Island. Thanks to Marie Forleo for sending me the link.

5 Tips to Build a Successful SaaS Product in Bangladesh

On July 1, 2011 / Shaer on Business / 5 Comments

Form my previous post, Internet Products or SaaS in Bangladesh, it looks like bdjobs is the only celebrated success story in this area.

Why? What is the catch? I think the catch is to

A. Start in time. You start too early, your cash is dried up before you turn the business to a profitable one. You start late, too many players don’t allow you to gain enough customers. Customer acquisition cost shoots up.

Make sure customer acquisition cost is lower than the lifetime value of your customer. Now, what is that? If your total marketing cost (includes sales, marketing & advertising cost) is Tk. 1o lac and if you acquire 1000 paying customers with that money, you per customer acquisition cost is tk. 1000 (=10 lac/1000). On the other hand Customer Lifetime Value is ARPU * Customer’s Average Lifetime. ARPU is Average Revenue Per User (User is synonymous to Customer here). Customer Lifetime is the time a customer stays with you. So, if your product’s subscription charge is Tk. 1000 per year and if a customer stays with you on an average for 3 years. Then your customer’s Lifetime Value is tk. 3000 (= tk. 1000 * 3 yrs). So, you have to make sure Customer Lifetime Value > Customer Acquisition Cost.

Sounds good? But you might like to discount the paybacks and apply the time value of money as well.

B. Start with deep enough pocket to sustain long enough and to acquire enough paying customers to reach break even.

C. Ensure you are strong at both ends: IT and marketing. You have a great IT team, and you think you can build a better product than bdjobs in a couple of months. Great! But do you have the marketing budget and expertise to bite a share from a company with tk. 6.5 cr yearly revenue, or from a group like Transcom (prothom-alojobs)?

Equally important is your IT team. I think Prothom-alojobs could do better had they have an IT team with better know-how in design, usability and performance.

D. Possess business domain expertise and connections. Not for all product it is crucial, but for some for sure. For example you are thinking of building amazon.com in Bangladesh. You need to have connection with publishers, writers and courier services for that matter. Well, you can build those over time, but that turns out to be a fancy idea if already a couple of strong players exists in market.

E. Ensure you have a competitive advantage. Well, it is true for any business. For IT product starting early is a huge competitive advantage. You ride on the network effect. Having a strong brand to piggyback is another advantage that is utilized by Google, Apple and even Prothom-alo in Bangladesh. Strict government regulation can be another one, as enjoyed by baidu.com as opposed to Google in China.

That’s pretty much it. 5 tips delivered as promised :).

So, what are the last words? Last words are This is the time for Bangladesh. I wonder if Akhoni.com has came up with its name from this concept! You delay more only to see some global giant or a tiny Indian company grabs your cherished market left you beholding.

Internet Products or SaaS in Bangladesh

On July 1, 2011 / Shaer on Business / 1 Comment

Recently our team is contemplating on some of the ideas to launch a SaaS (Software as a Service) product or a simple internet product. Some of the successful internet products in Bangladesh I can name are:

bdjobs: job site, successful both commercially and on popularity index. bdjobs registered tk. 65 million yearly revenue last year. Not bad, eh?

prothom-alojobs: a late follower of bdjobs, but piggybacking on its popular Bangla daily, gained some popularity. Its main revenue source is earned from training rather than from job ads.

Somewherein Blog: Started early, and enjoying lion’s share as a Bangla blogging platform. I doubt it generates enough revenue to maintain and sustain global competition. What I presume Somweherein has other business that ensures cash flow. Aawaj and custom software development are two I can think of.

Contenders of somwherein are prothothm-aloblog, Sachalayatan, amarblog, nagorikblog and myriad more. Obviously they are not commercially interesting.

Champs21 launched with big budget and huge media hype leveraging on its partner The Daily Star. I am sure they are generating some revenue. One thing is good that they did not offer free from the beginning, thus following model of lean startup. Sure Champs21 is yet to recover its investment, but that’s fine. You don’t expect to reach break even in the first year of your launching.

KhanAcademyBangla developed by Nascenia in partnership with the world famous Khan Academy is yet to launch commercially. The content is great and licensed under creative commons, but they are yet to come up with a business model.

Stockbangladesh is hugely popular, at least it was during the heydays of share business. Stockbangladesh earns revenue from advertisement only. Not a very sustainable model, I would say. It probably leverages its popularity to sell trainings and other stock related products to business organizations. OMO is such a product.

A second most popular stock related product is bdipo. Nascenia is the developer an owner of it. It gets revenue from ad and subscription through Freemium model. No, not really a commercially lucrative product yet.

The Ebay model is followed by CellBazaar (acquired by Telenor) and Clickbd. Both are strong players and show all the signs to sustain and make a successful business. Cellbazaar being the partner of Grameenphone sure has edge over others, and sure generates some revenue from mobile platform. Clickbd on the other hand, being a Bangladeshi company, is in an advantageous position regarding issues related to government regulation, permission and expansion.

The very recent addition is akhoni.com selling online discount coupons. Wannabe Groupon in Bangladesh. Stellar start. Time will say how long they need to hang around before becoming next bdjobs.

There are many news sites those are among the top hit site in Bangladesh. They are far more popular than most of the sites I mentioned above. I am confused if I should mention them, as they are more of sites and less of internet product. Especially those who ride over their print editions (e.g. prothom-alojobs, thedailystar, newage). The first notable purely digital news site is bdnews 24.com. The followers are banglanews24 — created by the mighty and (in)famous Basundhara group and sheershanews.

Is that all? Of course not, but these are the names come up top of mind (ToM) of mine and sure many more like me.

Stay tuned to catch up more about SaaS.

Working with Khan Academy

On April 24, 2011 / Shaer on Business / 5 Comments

Corporate social responsibility, diversify, working on education sector: people may call Nascenia working with Khan Academy in many names. So, how do we want to call it?

We noticed Salman Khan‘s work in the mid of 2010. That’s after he had been endorsed by Bill Gates in Aspen Ideas Festival 2010. Thanks to Syed Raihan for sharing it on his Facebook status. One man educating the whole world! A descendant from Bangaldeshi soil is working to change how the world will be learning in next decade! Let’s see what he had in his mind:

Salman Khan on TED, interviewed by Bill Gates

What are we doing here? Can’t we join him in any way? That was our first instinct.

Meanwhile Salman received an award from Google by their 10^100 project. Translating in other languages were one of the objectives.

So, I partnered with my friend Arif Zaman who is a professional video translator and dubber, and in my opinion the best in the country. We took the first lesson of Alzebra, translated and dubbed it into Bangla and wrote to Salman with the sample. “… Bangla is the 6th most spoken language in the world… as you are descendant from this soil… you might want to give back…”, I wrote.

He replied! I replied back. We signed a contract in a month. We started a pilot project with Biology, the most difficult among all playlists, I would say.

We succeeded with the pilot. And here we are completing the entire Science playlists of 381 videos by May 2011! That’s about 82 hours of lecture in Bangla about Physics, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry and Biology. Learners, go visit Khan Academy Bangla on Youtube or Khan Academy Bangla website, and get some international standard lectures from an MIT and Harvard scholar. And, hey! He will be talking in Bangla for you this time :)

Back to the question we asked ourselves at the beginning of this post. What do we want to call it?

We call it passion. We are proud to be driven by that rather than the lessons in MBA classes :).

Bumpy Road of a Startup

On November 5, 2010 / Shaer on Business / 1 Comment

It’s a continuous high and low. We receive an award on one moment, an important client becomes non-responsive on the next. We get a nod from a major client, one of our engineers leaves for a multinational on the next. If you like roller coster ride, bungee jumping, adrenaline rush, horror film or something of that sort, you gotta love the ride on a startup.

No guarantee of a paycheck at the end of the month, you punch your ATM card not to see the account is topped up by an invisible one. You got to plan for your next dollar, but you never know where it is coming from. Usually it comes from an unusual source. Boy! You gotta love this one.

So, how do you survive these? You must know how to dream. Dream of a glorified future on the expense of the bumpy road ahead. That’s the entry barrier to this territory. That’s why it is not everybody’s cup of tea.

Award Tastes Sweet

On November 1, 2010 / Shaer on Business / 6 Comments

We built a small mobile app and entered into the contest named Alo Ashbei, a mobile app contest organized by Grameenphone and Microsoft. Like ours 280 applications were submitted. 50 were shortlisted for 2nd round. In this round each team presented their apps with technical details and commercial viability. 10 teams were selected for the final round. At this round tech geeks from industry, academicians and business personalities judged the apps and their potential.

Yesterday three out of those 10 were awarded with prize money, certificates, mobile handsets and 400+ softwares by Microsoft. Even more interesting is that Grameenphone is going to work to launch those apps commercially.

We were one of those top three.

GP and Microsoft are awarding Nascenia IT

From right to left: Faruk, Shaer and Fuad of Nascenia IT, Country Head of Microsoft, ICT Minister, and CEO of GP.

Our product was IPO Result Search. Go ahead, and try it!

Now we have an upbeat mood in our team. Award really tastes sweet. Cheers!

Page 1 of 212 »

Catching up: recap on visits to Europe and onward

Nascenia won as a Red Herring Asia 2012 Finalist

Apu Saha of University of Khulna Won the First Scholarship by Nascenia

Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

Companies worked in Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

Communities of Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

Websites built in Ruby on Rails in Bangladesh

Entrepreneurship is Like Painting: Interview of Richard Branson

5 Tips to Build a Successful SaaS Product in Bangladesh

Internet Products or SaaS in Bangladesh

Working with Khan Academy

Bumpy Road of a Startup

Award Tastes Sweet

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