SPOTLIGHTBangladesh looks inward  A statistic jumped out at me while reporting from Dhaka this week: Only 1% of Bangladesh's startup funding last year came from local investors. For a country with a population of 178 million people, a growing middle class, and a globally successful diaspora spanning finance and venture capital, this domestic startup capital base is surprisingly thin. The situation has been made more difficult by the political and economic turbulence of recent years. The launch of the Bangladesh Startup Investment Company, a new fund backed by 39 local banks, aims to change that by unlocking local capital from the financial institutions and high-net-worth families, and in turn, by making the market more enticing for global investors. The chart above also hints at why its timing matters. Since the post-pandemic venture boom peaked in 2021, startup funding activity in Bangladesh, like many emerging markets, has slowed sharply. As global investors become more selective, ecosystems increasingly need local institutions that are willing to keep deploying capital through the downturns. But more money alone won't solve everything. Speaking at the launch event for the fund, Shiv Choudhury, founding partner of Wavemaker Growth, said his firm had historically invested in Bangladesh by backing exceptional founders. The hope now, he suggested, is that initiatives like this can shift the conversation toward confidence in the broader ecosystem itself. In other words, the country is no longer just trying to produce startups - it's trying to produce the conditions that allow startups to keep growing. Peter Cowan, engagement editor |
