User:Nayeem.ashrafi

Startup Bangladesh is a campaign of the Government of Bangladesh.

The campaign was first announced by Sajeeb Wazed, ICT Adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2015. It was the first-ever Government led Startup Competition that wanted to connect startups to markets and investors by providing mentoring and incubation to promising startups. In addition to that the startups was also received funding, co-working space, logistic support, training, go-to-market support, legal and intellectual property support and other opportunities and exposure to meet multiple VCs and other funds.

In 2016, the ICT Division of the Government of Bangladesh has undertaken a US$ 27 million 5-years project named "Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy (iDEA)" to create an innovation ecosystem and entrepreneurship culture in Bangladesh. The objectives were to:


 * 1) Establish an Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy;
 * 2) Support to develop 200 innovative ICT products or services;
 * 3) Establish a public limited company to invest in startups;
 * 4) Create an innovation pipeline in 100 educational institutions;
 * 5) Train up 3,000 innovators around the country.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has declared Vision 2021 and Digital Bangladesh as part of the election manifesto in 2008, since then Bangladesh’s ICT ecosystem have been grown tenfold.

Startup Bangladesh
The campaign has gained enormous response from startup ecosystem and support organizations, as a result numerous startups, venture capital, banks, incubators, accelerators, competitions and international bodies have been attracted to work in Bangladeshi startup ecosystem.


 * Create innovators: an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Academy is established in 2018 to regularly create innovators around the country
 * Startup support: providing funding, mentoring, co-working space, business development support, legal and intellectual property support and other necessary support to startups
 * Startup funding: a US$ 27 million fund is allocated to support at least 200 innovative ICT startups in the form of grant or equity
 * Company incorporation: a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) named Startup Bangladesh Limited to be formed to invest in startups. The company will create or manage venture capital fund or fund of funds to invest in startups.
 * Student to startup: idea competition named Student to Startup have been organized in 100 universities to create innovation pipeline in so students can regularly come up with innovative problem-solving business ideas
 * Incubation program: 3,000 innovators/startups are getting trained and nurtured through training, incubation and acceleration programs with a comprehensive localized curriculum
 * Local and international training: 200 startups are getting local and international training in design thinking, market research, idea validation, product/market fit, product development, growth hacking, agile methodology and other business modules
 * Research, advocacy and policy making: many Seminar, Workshop & Symposium for idea innovation, advocacy and policymaking have been arranged. A market research for Identifying the needs of startups in Bangladesh is also underway.

Type and sizes of different funding

 * Pre-seed stage startups/12K USD (1 million BDT), Grant for making prototypes
 * Seed stage startups/120K USD (10 million BDT), Equity investment
 * Growth stage startups/600K USD/round (50 million BDT), Equity Investment
 * Guided startups/600K USD/round (50 million BDT), Equity Investment
 * Targeted investment/600K USD, Equity/PPP
 * Co-investment: 600K USD, Equity, Matching Fund or Fund Participation

A Startup Bangladesh Accelerator have been inaugurated by Advisor to Prime Minister Sajeeb Wazed in 2018.

Depending on the 5 criteria: business concept, feasibility, strategy, implementation plan and management team, Startup Bangladesh has already funded 100+ innovative startups in various batches.