Landknock, founded in 2015 by entrepreneur Mahir Amirur Rahman and his co-founders, has evolved from a social media app to one of the leading provider of business automation SaaS (Software as a service) solutions in Bangladesh.
Landknock initially developed a location-based social application before pivoting to address market voids. Initially, the company developed a field force monitoring solution for corporations. This was succeeded by a successful delivery management system that rapidly gained national recognition.
“Right now, the scene of Bangladesh in rural areas has been changed. People now want everything in an app. This changed the landscape of how people are doing business. We are doing the best we can to connect the small entrepreneurs in rural Bangladesh with their customers”, Mahir said.
Going back to 2015, he launched his first digital product called “Landknock Social Media,” which was named after the company he founded in the same year called “Landknock,” along with three other co-founders; Md. Iftekhairul Islam, Md. Abdullah Al Noman & Sheikh Rezmin Akter.
It was an app that was designed to connect people on a map. Despite the product offering some unique features such as more connectivity, map-chat, real-time movement in maps, etc. this app failed to get enough attention from the market.
“But I kept visiting different companies and talking to people from different industries to find the right market gap and wanted to solve that with the power of technology”, said Mahir.
Later, the Landknock team realized that even though his first app idea failed, it had the potential to reach corporates. Companies in the FMCG, Pharmaceutical, and Distribution business always have field workers, and it is a headache for the management team to monitor what’s going on in the field.
Then Mahir and his team tweaked their social media app, added more functionalities that corporates would prefer and launched a new product called “Landknock Field Force Monitoring Solution”, a field force monitoring system for companies with field working resources working outside the head office.
They launched a desktop version for the head office personnel and a mobile version for the field workers.
Three years after launching their first product and conducting extensive research and development on it, they got their first customer in 2018.
Keeping this product in a continuous sales funnel, Mahir built his second product, “Landknock Delivery Management Solution.”
At that time, Bangladesh was growing exponentially in the e-commerce sector. More and more people started e-commerce businesses to support the overreaching demand from people all over the country.
To meet that demand, new delivery companies started operating in every corner of the country. Targeting that niche, Mahir and his team launched the delivery operation management system.
Gradually, Landknock’s delivery app became one of the promising delivery management software in the country, making a significant impact on the tech industry.
Traditional software at that time was not fully well-made for the unique need those new small delivery companies required. On the other hand, international delivery management software, although widely used, failed to grasp the Bangladesh market due to the nature of how businesses are being operated in the country.
After conducting market research on competitors, talking to the people who are dealing with the delivery operation, and learning their struggles, Mahir and the team built the right solution that the market needed.
This recognition yielded more customers, a positive impact and national awards for the team.
The following year, in 2019, their team was selected among the top 9 among more than 1,100+ startups from all over the country to be selected into batch 6 of the GP Accelerator program. It was the country’s leading accelerator program back then, in partnership with Seedstars. This international organization promotes and supports startup ecosystems in emerging markets, especially in Asia.
And then, during COVID-19, when the entire country went into lockdown, Mahir and his team brought up another innovative idea: building an Online Grocery Management System so that retailers could continue their business operations during the lockdown.
It had a huge impact on Bangladesh's retail scenario at that time. People from all over the country started calling them for their grocery management systems, including Sylhet, Rajshahi, Chittagong, Barisal etc.
Although it was called “Grocery Management System”, actually any retailer could use this for any product, even online sellers registered for this system too.
The Bangladesh government noticed this app's success. For such extraordinary contribution, Mahir and his team became the champions at the “Call for Nation” award in 2020, out of 681 submitted projects.
With innovative, up-to-date and tech-friendly features, “Landknock” product ecosystem has almost 40,000 users from the whole country at the moment.
With rapidly growing users nationwide, Landknock (https://landknock.com/) has established itself as a key player in Bangladesh's tech scene. It constantly seeks new ways to leverage technology to solve real-world problems and targets more ground-breaking innovations in the near future.
