Bangladesh Angels

Munawar Hafiz is the founder and CEO of OpenRefactory, Inc., an application security company that intends to improve the way developers write secure, reliable, and compliant code. Recently AISI, in partnership with BAN, has led a pre-seed investment into OpenRefactory, which is serving clients around the world, from its bases in both US and Bangladesh. In this episode, Munawar will discuss the possibilities of deeptech in Europe.

Deborah Quazzo is the Managing Partner at GSV Ventures. GSV Ventures is a venture fund investing in education and workforce skills technologies that are disrupting the $7 Trillion sector and named to Insider’s inaugural list of top 100 seed investors. In addition, Deborah is the Co-founder of the ASU+GSV Summit. Now in its 13th year, the ASU+GSV Summit celebrates innovations and innovators across the global “preK to Gray” learning and talent landscape and attracts over 5,500 attendees. Hear from Deborah on the history of GSV and the ASU+GSV summit, how has GSV's investment thesis or process changed as a result of the pandemic, GSV's investment strategy when investing into emerging markets such as India and Indonesia, de-risking investments, and more. 

With 9 years of experience across Ed-tech, Food-tech, Beauty-tech, Media-tech, and Healthcare tech, Deeksha wears many hats as an entrepreneur, consultant, investor, collaborator. She is committed to enabling growth in the startup ecosystem through diversity and sustainability as the driving force behind her work.

Encubay is a diversity-focused startup network that is creating a connected and inclusive ecosystem for female founders. Encubay Angel Network , one of the initiatives under Encubay's banner, aims to unlock the huge potential of funds that rest with women & men who are keen to invest in diverse founders.

Founded in 2020, Encubay was launched in collaboration with GreenHouse Capital Africa that aims at bringing up the percentage of women in the startup ecosystem from the current 14% which is dismal.

In her journey with Encubay, Deeksha also realized that there was a lack of funding that was making its way into the hands of early-stage startups founded by women. It was hypothesized that part of the reason was a lack of female angel investors in India. After some women reached out and expressed their interest in investing in diverse startups, the idea for the Encubay Angel Network was born.

In this episode, Deeksha talks about the investing strategy & process of Encubay, cross border pollination, collaboration, and co-investments in the region, gender lens investing in SEA, among other things.

Visa Kannan is a Partner at Saison Capital, a single LP fund backed by Credit Saison Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. that invests in Pre-Seed to Series B companies globally, but with a focus on South East Asia and India. Investing across all verticals, including but not limited to SaaS, marketplaces, fintech, Saison Capital has a deep fondness for embedded finance – non-fintech companies and industry leaders that are looking to build fintech arms within their ecosystems. 

Visa comes with a wealth of experience in the startup space, having previously held leadership roles at 2 unicorns - Grofers and Lazada. She also has a background in consulting and law. In this episode, Visa talks about Saison Capital, its investment thesis, Saison's portfolio companies in Pakistan and India, scaling startups, and more!

Adrien Barthel is a co-founder of Sleek - Asia's leading corporate services platform with more than 5,000 SMEs under management in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. 

Hear from Angela Lee, Founder of 37 Angels, about the story behind 37 Angels, its initiatives, guiding principles in due diligence, her approach to value creation in getting companies from Seed to Series A, and more. 37 Angels, based out of New York, is one of the leading communities of women investors committed to funding early stage startups.

Eugenia Shevchenko is an Acceleration & Growth Programs Manager at Seedstars. Seedstars is a global venture capital fund, investing in early-stage tech startups in emerging markets, with over 50 portfolio companies. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it operates across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Central-Eastern Europe, and Asia, with an aim to support changemakers who are passionate about making a difference in emerging and frontier markets through entrepreneurship and technology.

In the ninth episode of the Women Startup Leaders Series, we have Lafifa Jamal (President @ BWIT), Rezwana Khan (CEO of Star Computer Systems Limited and Secretary General @ BWIT), and Tawhida Shiropa (Founder & CEO @ Moner Bondhu) speaking on the bottlenecks and challenges for women in building startups, moving beyond SME-type models, and how we can get more female investors and mentors involved in the Bangladeshi ecosystem. This is an exclusive episode in collaboration with the Bangladesh Women In Technology (BWIT), which is dedicated to mobilizing women involved in different levels of the technology industry in Bangladesh and creating a wide range of professional development and networking opportunities for them. 

Welcome to the second episode of SCALE by Bangladesh Angels. In this podcast series, we talk to entrepreneurs and investors who built and invested in businesses that have gone on to raise or generate revenues of millions of dollars, employ hundreds or more employees and serve millions of users in order to unlock the secrets of scaling a company

In the second episode of SCALE, we have Mukul Rustagi, Co-founder and CEO of Classplus, where he engages in a fireside chat with the BAN community and a host of other edtech founders from the Bangladeshi ecosystem on how Classplus has been able to raise $85 million on their way to becoming South Asia's emerging edtech company 

Classplus is a #SaaS platform that enables private coaching institutes to streamline their video distribution, payments, communication, and online assessments through a single platform. It is currently backed by global venture capitalists, serial entrepreneur-investors, and giant tech companies, such as RTP Global — a prolific investor in early-stage startups, Tiger Global Management , GSV Ventures, FALCON EDGE CAPITAL, LP, Times Internet, Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital Surge, Spiral Ventures Pte. Ltd. and STRIVE.

Welcome to the first episode of SCALE by Bangladesh Angels. In this podcast series, we talk to entrepreneurs and investors who built and invested in businesses that have gone on to raise or generate revenues of millions of dollars, employ hundreds or more employees and serve millions of users in order to unlock the secrets of scaling a company

Patrick Flesner is a growth capital investor and a partner at the investment firm LeadX Capital Partners. Each year, he looks at hundreds of tech companies that want to raise capital in order to accelerate growth. He sees patterns in companies that fail and companies that succeed. His respective growth expertise and his knowledge deriving from more than 16 years in Private Equity and Venture Capital have gone into his latest book, FastScaling.