Three Bangladeshi tech entrepreneurs have been named in the list of Rest of World (RoW)'s 100 Global Tech's Changemakers.
They are--Sonia Bashir Kabir, Managing Director, SBK Tech Ventures; Afeef Zaman, Co-founder and CEO, ShopUp; and Morin Talukder, Co-Founder and CEO, Pickaboo.
Rest of World identified 100 people outside Silicon Valley and the West whose efforts directly impact countries where the majority of the world's population lives, ranging from tech leaders, innovators, and investors to activists.
Sonia Bashir Kabir
Managing Director, SBK Tech Ventures
Sonia Bashir Kabir is the founder and managing director of SBK Tech Ventures, a Bangladesh-focused venture capital fund, which invests in startups that support the digital development of rural areas. SBK’s portfolio includes Dmoney, Solshare, and Praava Health. Previously, as the country manager of Microsoft Bangladesh, Sonia partnered with donor agencies, banks, telecommunications companies, and students, to mobilize and grow the company’s initiatives. At Microsoft, she worked to provide microloans to women to start IT businesses.
Morin Talukder
Co-founder, CEO, Pickaboo
Morin Talukder is the co-founder and CEO of Pickaboo, a Bangladesh-based e-commerce platform. Though still in his 20s, Talukder is a seasoned expert in the booming e-commerce industry, having founded the online shopping platform ehatbazaar.com in 2015, which he sold a year later to focus on Pickaboo. During its six years of operation and five funding rounds, it has gained the confidence of its customers and now claims to be Bangladesh’s most trusted e-commerce platform. In order to stay competitive, Talukder has prioritized offering a high-speed delivery service with turnarounds of as little as three hours and has turned Pickaboo into one of the first e-commerce retailers in Bangladesh to introduce monthly payment plans and customer membership plans.
Afeef Zaman
CEO, ShopUp
Afeef Zaman is an expert in problem solving in emerging markets, especially his home country of Bangladesh. He’s the CEO of ShopUp, Bangladesh’s largest full stack business-to-business commerce platform for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. A “radical optimist,” he bootstrapped Ice9 — a venture builder providing solutions for emerging economies — to success in his 20s. Following this, he decided to help the entrepreneurs who run the country’s 4.5 million popular mom-and-pop stores but struggle to access its formal financial system due to a lack of digital presence. Thanks to ShopUp, they can now access digital credit, B2B sourcing, logistics, and business management solutions. After closing South Asia’s largest funding round worth $75 million in 2021, the company has just added to its funds with a $34 million series B extension round.
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