Bangladesh Angels

Jed Ng from Angel School joins us for the latest episode of SCALE. Jed is an Operator who builds tech businesses from the ground up. He built and ran the world's largest API marketplace in partnership with a16z-backed, RapidAPI. As an Angel, he has backed 2 startups from seed to Unicorn, and has an exit. Since 2020, he has built his own syndicate and is backed by a Super Network of 900+ LPs globally. 

Sadia Haque is the CEO and Co-Founder at ShareTrip, the country’s first and leading online travel platform that provides end to end travel solutions and experience. 

Amrita Vir is the Head of Strategy & Business Expansion, and Acting Country Manager at wagely and Sanjida Tanny is Lead of Community, and Communications, PR at wagely. wagely is Asia's leading financial wellbeing platform providing earned-wage access fintech operating in Bangladesh and Indonesia. It recently raised $8.3 million in pre-Series A funding, led by East Ventures (Growth Fund), with participation from returning investors like Integra Partners, the Asian Development Fund, Global Founders Capital, Trihill Capital, Blauwpark Partners and 1982 Ventures. The raise will go towards fueling Wagely’s expansion in Bangladesh, where it recently launched, and build other features to become a “holistic financial wellness platform".

Amarjit Singh Batra is the Managing Director for Spotify India and joined the company in April 2018 to set up operations and build the business in the country.

In this episode, hear from Amarjit on the do's and don'ts from the perspective of consumer tech startups, building a playbook for scale, how he pioneered the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) classifieds business in India, building an organic marketing engine and more!

Samira Khan has most recently worked at the intersection of social innovation/impact + tech at both Microsoft, where she was a Director on the AI & Sustainability Market Development team, and Salesforce. While at Salesforce, she was involved in piloting a program with the WEF COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs. Samira has worked across corporations, governments, and the social sector for over fifteen years on innovative solutions to solving some of society’s greatest challenges. She is especially interested in business model innovations for good. Her work spans the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia. She is a former strategy / management consultant; and while at A.T. Kearney in Southeast Asia, she played a lead role in starting and building its social impact organization. She is also passionate about topics related to gender and youth empowerment toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Umaila Akhter is the Founder & CEO of Turn Up PR, Producer at The Turn Up Network and Turn Up Studio. She is a Public Relations and Communication Professional with over 12 years of experience in PR, Brand Communications and Advertising. Her passion lies around helping purpose-driven brands/ new products/startups/ curating go-to-market strategies to bring big ideas to life.

Turn Up is an unapologetic spin on publicity curation: a PR firm with a focus on collaboration, coverage of untold stories & creative voices. It integrates various tools that extend beyond the traditional media for publicity curation. It aims to promulgate success stories of Bangladesh, particularly about businesses that are based in the outskirts of the cities or abroad, globally.

In this episode, we will hear from Umaila on:

👉🏽 Dissolving the lines between PR and marketing

👉🏽 PR for startups to large corporations, and trends you've seen

👉🏽 Evolution of the media and influencer environment

👉🏽 How is technology evolving in the communication sector

👉🏽 Her advice for founders

Lunchbox is a collection of powerful digital ordering platforms for restaurants, built by restauranteurs. It creates white-label apps, web ordering, and in-restaurant kiosk systems, and more as parts of its modern and creative online ordering solutions for enterprise restaurant chains and ghost kitchens. Earlier this year, the company announced the closing of its $50 million Series B funding round led by Coatue Management with participation from existing investors Primary Venture Partners and 645 Ventures as well as executives from DoorDash, Sweetgreen, and &pizza.

Nabeel Alamgir is the CEO and Co-Founder at Lunchbox. 

Hear from Nabeel on:

Julio Arias is Co-founder at Sketchnote & Managing Director at Sketchnote Partners. He is an expert in Asian markets where he lived for over 20 years, first as a Beijing-based management consultant for clients such as eBay and PayPal, then as an analyst and diplomat for the EU in China, Belgium, Indonesia, and Japan. Julio is a prolific angel investor and advisor to 50+ startups. He's an early member of Angel Investment Network Indonesia, Partner at Cupido Capital and Chairman of Trevol Labs. Julio received an MSc from the LSE and a BA from Durham University, and a scholar at the EU-China Young Managers Training Program in Beijing.

Sketchnote Partners Fund is focused on enabling and empowering entrepreneurs through an all-in-one learning, productivity, and collaboration platform. Sketchnote aims to facilitate access to finance to first-time entrepreneurs. In this podcast, we will hear from Julio on:

👉🏽 Sketchnote's screening/due diligence process and portfolio companies

👉🏽 Approach towards the Indian and SE Asian ecosystems, and how Bangladesh compares

👉🏽 Thoughts on the Bangladesh tech ecosystem and the opportunities here

In this episode we have with us Francisque Lebrunie, Venture Partner at Super Capital. Entrepreneur and investor, Francisque has over 15 years of experience in running e-commerce companies. He founded Chemise-Homme.com in 2004 and sold it in 2017. Based in India for several years, Francisque is the venture partner of Super Capital, one of the largest communities of business angels in France. He is in charge of the local sourcing and the relationship with the acceleration structures. Hear from Francisque about the initial vision of Super Capital, its due diligence and syndication process, portfolio companies, its approach towards the Indian ecosystem, and investing in South Asian opportunities, including in Bangladesh. 

Catch Hannes Kirchhoff  from SOLshare, Julian Weber from SELISE and Zahin Razeen from Hydroquo+ in the third episode of The Bridge, where they talk about:

- Bangladesh's startup ecosystem and leveraging the DACH connection to create stronger regional corporations and accelerate the startup ecosystem in Bangladesh

- the areas of work of each of their respective companies

- building the local talent pipeline and leveraging Bangladeshi talent

The Bangladesh-German Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BGCCI) is a trusted name among German and Bangladeshi businesses. Since its inception, BGCCI has been working as a catalyst for accelerating economic growth for both the partner countries. Being an independent, member-driven bilateral trade organization, BGCCI is known for its vast network at home and abroad.

About the Bridge: