Inspirational journey of a Bangladeshi youth
By Bipul K Debnath
In September 2013, Sheikh Shourav landed in the Chinese capital of Beijing and started a new life in China.
After completing his Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) in Science from Rajshahi Cadet College, he received a full scholarship from the Chinese government to pursue his higher studies. During his college days, his teachers inspired him to look at different career options, which helped him to become an entrepreneur later on.
After learning the Chinese language at Tongji University in Shanghai for a year, he started to understand the Chinese tech culture. He saw the Chinese people buying most of their things through e-commerce platforms like Tmall or Taobao. Jack Ma of Alibaba, an online marketplace, was the pioneer in making e-commerce popular in China. Inspired by that, Shourav wanted to start his own software and technology company and take part in this new revolution.
To achieve his dream, he started to save money from his monthly scholarship funds. At the same time, he started using his Chinese fluency to provide service to foreign companies to connect with Chinese manufacturers. He also got to work with quite a few Bangladeshis. This practical experience helped him both to save some money and to understand the different kinds of business models.
With the money saved up, Shourav launched his e-commerce business in the middle of 2015, and initially started selling products in the United States via Amazon. He later named his startup Astronno.
Presently, Astronno is an e-commerce and product design startup that is focused on internet of things related products _ for example, an app connected hover board, and smart home solutions. The distribution model of Astronno is through e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, etc.
When asked about the future plan for his startup Astronno, Shourav told YI: At present, we are trying to expand into other marketplaces like Jet, Bestbuy, Walmart and Rakuten. We want to create an ecosystem using our own website and other marketplaces so that we can reach global customers for our products. I also have a dream to use the same ecosystem and experience to distribute Bangladeshi products to customers worldwide in the future, when we are ready.
Initially when the business grew, Shourav hired two Chinese executives for his startup. His company now has a team of 12 people, including a virtual team based in Bangladesh for software development.
Shafi Ul Alam, Shihab Shahriar, Sakib Hasan and Rayhan Kabir are currently working on the Bangladeshi team. Shourav launched their first software, named Recomendly, at the end of 2016. Recomendly is a SaaS (software as a service) based platform which is a product recommendation software to boost the confidence of customers and sellers, providing offers, information, and recent trends.
We aim to incorporate machine learning to analyze the sales patterns and customer behaviour and thereby, boost sales by helping customers to choose what they like. Such recommendation systems, already prominent among the e-commerce giants, are way out of (reach) for SMEs (small and medium enterprises). Wed like to help SMEs by providing services, Shafi Ul Alam, a software engineer and key talent at Recomendly, told to this correspondent.
Shourav is now majoring in software engineering at South China University of Technology in Guangzhou under the Chinese Government Scholarship Programme.
Shouravs success on building two websites for e-commerce in a short time may not be a story of massive success, but what is inspirational is that he did it all at just 23 years of age, even before graduating from university.
His story can be an inspiration for many Bangladeshi students who want to become entrepreneurs, create jobs and become change makers.
Shouravs one advice to his fellow dreamers is: You can work long unpaid hours on your dream project without expecting an instant reward. You have nothing to lose, but have everything to gain. You can come up with a lot of excuses, but the most difficult thing is to start!
Photos: Courtesy
