Start-up Mentality in South Asia

Sitting in the basement of a building for two hours on Tuesday and Thursday mornings learning about the culture, geography, and environmental aspects of a country that I had never travelled to, felt like any other class that I had taken during my time at Columbia. Unlike my other classes, however, we had the opportunity to visit the country that we had been studying all semester and carry out research projects while there.

In class we had learned about how Bangladesh’s population suffers from endemic poverty, illiteracy, poor governance, and income inequality. The country sits on a tectonically active delta, and faces monsoon flooding annually for 4 months out of the year. It was described as country that was the size of Iowa where the equivalent of half of the population of the United States lived. It was difficult to comprehend a lot of the statistics that were presented to us prior to the trip, but once we arrived in Dhaka, these seemingly abstract numbers became more visible to me.

Rickshaw drivers in Dhaka (Yassamin Issapour)

In mid-March, after two months of classroom learning, vaccinations and a long journey filled with multiple flight delays, we arrived in Dhaka. Walking around the city, nothing felt familiar, and the streets were always bustling with people and vendors throughout the day. Everywhere that we went, we were considered foreigners and people just stared at us, so we did not get much of a chance to have meaningful interactions with people outside of our class group until we met our counterparts from Dhaka University.

Over the next week, we spoke to graduate students who studied geology at Dhaka University about what it was like to grow up in Bangladesh, their experiences and aspirations. In many ways, we had similar aspirations of wanting to improve the communities that we lived in, but we were different because our our respective opportunities and resources. Even some of the Bangladeshi students had never been to some of the villages that we visited on our research trip. When we visited these villages, the first thing that I noticed was that there a few major NGOs in the villages providing supplies and technology. But it was evident that the people living in the villages had innovative ways that solved their own problems. This experience coupled with the intelligence and passion of the Dhaka University students allowed me to come to the realization that we all know what works best for our daily lives.

When I got back to New York, I started to do further research on the population of Bangladesh, and saw that while the population is rapidly growing it is also very young. 60% of the population is below 30 years old. The number of internet users in Bangladesh grew from 100,000 to 33 million from 2000-2013, and continues to grow to the benefit of the population and local entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship, in particular, has been extremely popular in Bangladesh as a means of catalyzing social change and addressing social needs. It is clear that as Bangladesh strives to become the next “Asian Tiger” its aspirations rest upon its young population.

A long row of fabric sellers in a Dhaka market (Yassamin Issapour)

It is out of this notion that I along with the help of Professor Shibli, Rubayat Ul Islam, and the rest of the Dhaka University Business Faculty, created a start-up competition. The competition, Harmony Ventures at Dhaka University, will provide the resources for their projects that the students did not have before, including mentoring, funds and connecting them to entrepreneurs around the world. The competition, that will conclude in November, includes three stages, including a final round presentation. The innovative ideas that have been submitted so far range from healthcare to finance to architecture. It is evident that the spirit of entrepreneurship spans far beyond the American Silicon Valley; these first generation entrepreneurs are looking to make the world better and now, they have the chance to do it.

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Yassamin is a recent graduate of Columbia University, where she studied Economics and Sustainable Development. She is interested in emerging markets, and sustainable development solutions initiatives. She currently lives in London, where, as a New Yorker, she is on a hopeless quest to find a decent bagel.

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