How many of you feel that our country is very much in need of creating new sectors of business and that the timeline on this has been way overdue? Don’t you think that there are too many garment factories, banks, construction firms, and that it is enough now? Well, I believe so.
It has been a long time since we have been an independent country, and I am sure that we, as a nation and as individuals of this nation, have too much potential to just waste our lives on investing in already saturated and perfectly competitive markets.
Of course, we do a lot of research on different kinds of stuff, but how many people do you personally know who have the guts to think of something outside the box, and not just chase it somewhere abroad, but make it happen here? If you said “yes” in your head, I second you.
I may not be speaking with total expertise here, but I think we, as a still-developing nation, are becoming quite boring with our business ventures.
It is not that there are not enough diverse industries in our country, of course there are: Textiles, telecom, financial services (we are so full of these), shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, logistics, appliances, cement, chemicals, agribusiness, jute, leather, tea, food processing, fishing, natural gas, solar power, microfinance, glass, ceramics, light manufacturing, sporting goods, automotive industry, life sciences, software, social business, transport, construction, steel, shipping, and handicrafts.
Were you counting? I mentioned 31 of them, and some of them have already been diagnosed with terminal illnesses and are slowly approaching death. And in such cases, if you are still counting, you are not thinking like a true entrepreneur. And let’s not talk about our stock market just because some of us can.
We are a country full of people who have the potential of doing many different jobs at once.
Even our children in the playgrounds don’t like sticking to one particular role. So, everyone learns to be a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder, and a striker. And the same goes for cricket.
Now if I ask you to refocus the same perspective on our industrialists and entrepreneurs, then what would you see? Do you see people taking risks into new ventures a lot, or just investing into a market that is already up, running, and safe? I’m not David Copperfield and yet I can say you chose the latter.
Yes, of course we want assurance for our hard-earned money, but what do we do after we have earned enough to re-invest? We repeat the process, but we don’t create much.
When I see auto body-maker-turned-celebrity Leepu in the social media launching his all-efficient super-duper hybrid car, I feel extremely proud.
There are some others like Tahura Khanam and her husband and business partner Kamal Hossain Bhuiyan who run an industrial testing, inspection, and consultation services company and to my knowledge have also been awarded a Gold Award for their excellence in the field very recently by the International Arch of Europe. Does this not tell us that we are capable of reaching out of the orbit and create new ones?
I believe we lack both small-scale and industrial-level researchers and manufacturers of many tangible and intangible products that we could otherwise have done tremendous business with. If we give proper time and effort, I believe our country could nurture and grow entrepreneurs who would produce export-quality world-class smartphones, automobiles, machineries, marine navigation equipments, and also divert into complex biological and chemical research that would in turn prove to be largely beneficial scientific discoveries from which Bangladesh would benefit at first.
It’s not that I don’t see the obvious problem here. Of course the major setback is that we don’t want to use products made in Bangladesh as often as we should. The attraction towards major name brands worldwide will always be a factor. But we must always remember that it is here in this country where the production of various international brand items started.
The face of the world trade scenario is changing fast and we have been a developing nation far too long, despite the fact that we can do more than expected. We need to create and enter new markets and make that a going concern so that the growth of our economy can be a continuous fact and not just a concept to run over during the annual budget speech.
Who knows, if we as a nation start playing the game right, it may not be long before we can actually become a developed country in the not so distant future. If you have a dream to innovate, please give it a shot and then ten more. You know that it’s worth it.