With the government en route to fully realizing the “Digital Bangladesh” mantra, companies are seeing a huge rise in demand for Bangla script online.
This is evident from Google Play Store, where Ridmik Keyboard, the number one choice for typing Bangla, shows more than 50 million downloads.
Typing in Bangla has become a lot easier, thanks Shamim Hasnath, founder and CEO of Ridmik Labs. He created the Ridmik Keyboard in 2012 as a personal project when he was a sophomore at Buet.
What started out to be a pet project is now a universally-used digital keyboard in Bangla.
Ridmik's success was possible due to three factors - free of advertisements, easy to switch from English to Bangla, and multiple typing features.
It was possible to include all the typing options, ranging from Avro, Jatiyo, Provat and others.
As of now, the keyboard app has come a long way, also featuring voice input, next word suggestions, text editing options and more.
Similarly, typing in Bangla has been simplified in computers thanks to Bijoy and Avro, two of the leading Bangla typing software.
Development of the Avro Keyboard was started in 2003 by Dr Mehdi Hasan Khan, then a student from Mymensingh Medical College.
Avro supports writing Bangla text in both Unicode and ANSI.
It has support for fixed keyboard layout and phonetic layout named “Avro Phonetic” that allows typing Bengali through romanized transliteration.
Several fixed keyboard layouts like Probhat, Jatiya (National), Bornona, Avro Easy, Munir Optima are provided with Avro keyboard software to write Bengali.
The one that started it all
As of 2020, Bangla remained the seventh most spoken language across the world.
Visual-content provider Visual Capitalist ranked Bangla in the top ten of the list with 265 million native and non-native speakers across the globe.
But back in the day, there was no well-functioning, simple and easy-to-use software for typing in this language until the late 1980s.
Understanding the need for a feasible Bangla input software and script writing interface, Mustafa Jabbar, then a journalist, developed software and a keyboard layout, which revolutionized the printing and publishing industry in Bangladesh.
He established a computer business in 1987, but tech-based limitations were particularly constraining for the printing and publishing industries in Bangladesh and other Bangla-speaking regions.
He started by creating some Bangla fonts and subsequently developing the Bangla software and a Bangla keyboard layout known as “Bijoy” in 1988, also patenting it in the process.
Bijoy has established itself as one of the top Bangla script writing interface systems, currently in three versions, Bijoy 21, Bijoy 71 and Bijoy 52.
Fast forward to the new millennium, the Bijoy Keyboard Layout (BDS 1738:2018) and Bijoy Coding System (BDS 1935:2018) were the only standard for Bangla script writing in the world, before Avro and Ridmik came into the fray.
Jabbar also said that even in West Bengal his invention is the market leader.
But there were challenges along the way.
For the past two decades, Jabbar has struggled to defend his patent against pirated keyboard and software copies produced and imported mainly from China without his permission.
But in 2008, the inventor of the most popular Bangla computer keyboard won a prolonged legal battle to protect his design and software, with the government stopping pirated Bangla language keyboards from entering the country.
Now, Bijoy is also the only official software that has been adopted by the government of Bangladesh.
Flash forward to 2022, Jabbar is currently the telecom minister of the country.
Yet he continuously strives to put emphasis on the use of Bangla in the digital sphere, with the recent announcement of all promotional and system-generated text messages and notifications to be sent to mobile users in Bangla.
This feature will be beneficial for a vast number of people, since more than 65% of mobile users in Bangladesh still use feature phones, not smartphones, and many have a hard time reading English texts.
Commenting on the market demand of Bijoy, Mustafa Jabbar said: "Since its inception, Bijoy had a market monopoly till 2003, and it's still dominating the market with the entrance of other players with an estimated 200,000-300,000 licence purchases monthly."
It is officially used by all Bangla newspapers as well as all book publishing houses. Suppose 4,000 books will be hitting the book fair this year, all of which depend on Bijoy, he also said.
"It is the only software that has printed letters within the keyboard, that simplifies typing without changing the original way a letter is typed in Bengali, offering efficiency to the typist," Jabbar added.
Zisan Bin Liaquat also contributed to this feature
