Sheikh Iraj

More than 100 national and international tech firms got the opportunity to showcase their best products and services at BASIS SOFTEXPO 2017, which was held February 1-4 at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka. Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) hosted the expo with the slogan ‘Future in Motion’.
The expo had different interesting segments. The main attractions included local and foreign business matchmaking session, leader’s meet, developer’s cconference and tech women conference. A new addition to this year’s expo was a workshop titled ‘Coding for Kids’, where 400 students from different schools participated.
The four-day event was targeted at different corporate clients, but many young professionals and students came to visit. Some companies offered employment opportunities by setting up boxes where interested candidates could drop their CVs. Y&I recently spoke to some visitors and companies that participated in the expo.  

Nazmuzzaman, CEO, Bangladesh Microtechnology Ltd.

Banking solution and ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution are our main products. I started this company in 2008.  Besides these sectors, at the moment we are trying to work with SME enterprises. This year, we received a very positive response from customers and visitors. Their feedback is quite important to us as it helps us to understand the market and overcome our shortcomings. In our company, we have18 young software designers and we have plans to recruit more.
 
Md Latifur Rahman, Senior Executive, ADDIE SOFT

ADDIE SOFT started its journey in 2007. Education management software is our main product. By using this software, school authorities, parents and students are benefitted. For example, our result management software makes sure there are no mistakes when it comes to school report cards. Parents can pay school fees using their mobile phones. Also, school authorities can inform parents about attendance through SMS (short message service). This year, many teachers and students visited our stall, they had different queries regarding our products. Our softwares are locally developed, most of our software designers are fresh graduates.
 
Jamsed Alam, Participant

I am studying at the University of Information Technology and Sciences. At the expo, there was an opportunity for universities to demonstrate their projects. We participated in the expo to show our project, called ‘Robobac’. We displayed two robots at the very entrance of the expo. One of the robots can measure the dust in a room and work as an automatic vacuum cleaner. The other can function as a waiter, it can take orders and serve, as well. Our project was a demo, but we received overwhelming response from everyone.
I hope next year more universities will be able to display their interesting projects. Many signed up initially this time, but only five universities displayed their projects. Some didn’t provide necessary information regarding their projects, or the expo organisers didn’t find some others to be good enough. There was a plan to organise a separate zone where universities could put on their displays, but that didn’t happen.

Md Ashfaq Uddin, Visitor

I am studying Electrical & Electronic Engineering at Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology. I wanted to see what new products are being offered by our leading IT companies. After I complete my graduation, I want to work in the IT industry, that’s why I try to attend IT related events. This expo mainly targets big companies, but there were some segments for children and students as well. For example, there was this workshop on ‘Coding for Kids’, where students got an idea about the basics of computer programming. I also came to the fair because I had information that some companies were hiring students. I have submitted my CV, as well. 

Photos: Courtesy