With a population of 160 million, this country can be regarded as a company that is basically well-oriented and has high growth potential.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat official account “Passagegroup” (ID:passagegroup), Text: Fu Rao.
In the past ten years, Asia has been growing rapidly, but one country has been excluded from growth, and that is Bangladesh.
Compared with Indonesia or Vietnam, people know very little about this small country on the eastern border of India, except for the core garment manufacturing and agriculture.
“Bangladesh is in a crack geographically-it is not India, nor Southeast Asia.” Sylvana Q. Sinha, founder and CEO of Praava Health, a health technology startup, said, “Investors don’t know Bangladesh. China. For them, this is an unfamiliar new market,” she added.
Praava Health founder and CEO Svlvana Sinha/ Saikat Bhadra
When he came to Bangladesh many years ago, this Bangladeshi-American entrepreneur was shocked to see the scarcity of high-quality medical services. “I have observed that all capable people are going abroad for medical treatment, which opened my eyes.” Sinha said.
It is true that the medical gap exists because poverty is still widespread here. In Bangladesh, about 24 million people, or one-sixth, still live below the poverty line. However, several local entrepreneurs and investors said that some of the most common misunderstandings of foreign investors, including security issues and lack of infrastructure, are unfounded.
On the bright side, Bangladesh’s labor force is young—the median age is 28. Many of them are capable, skilled and eager to consume more quality services, products and content. With a population of 164 million, Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country in the world, with a population size of two-thirds that of Indonesia. Its annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate ranks among the highest in the world (about 7%), surpassing China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam in 2019.