Success and failure stories

Started with 100 coconuts for Tk 8,000; now 24-25 thousand coconuts and Tk 25 lakh in sales a month

Two friends in Dhaka began delivering cut coconuts after a Facebook ad. After wasted coconuts and a rainy-season glut, they now average Tk 25 lakh of sales a month.

Capital

৳10 lakh

Started in 2022

Started by posting a rice-reaper video on Facebook; now sells Tk 70-80 lakh of farm machinery a month

A young man in Rangpur began at 21 by selling a Chinese hand reaper through Facebook videos. Within a few years a three-person rented office became a 55-staff business that has sold machines to more than 40,000 farmers.

Started in 2017

Pharmacy boom in the pandemic: 69 model pharmacies and over 30 franchise stores in two years

Pharmacy business grew fast in Bangladesh during Covid; Lazz Pharma then ran 69 model pharmacies nationwide and opened more than 30 franchise stores in two years. But as shops multiplied, sales at some neighbourhood pharmacies later fell.

From household plastics to India in 2007 to 80 countries: RFL puts Tk 200 crore into a new export plant

PRAN-RFL Group began exporting in 2007 by sending household plastic goods to India and exported $40 million of plastic products in FY2023-24. Before its new Tk 200 crore household plastics plant in Kaliganj, Gazipur, even opened, it had a $6 million order from the United States.

Capital

৳200 crore

Started in 2007

Fined Tk 1 lakh for cutting earth and sand without permission, still selling at Tk 750 a truckload by night

In Kumarkhali, Kushtia, a mobile court fined a local leader Tk 1 lakh for cutting and selling earth and sand with an excavator next to a Padma riverbank embankment. After that the work stopped by day and went on at night, and the UNO says even on your own land earth cannot be cut without permission.

Ran for

1 months

Two diagnostic centres in Sreepur shut for operating without approval; three centres fined Tk 13,000 in total

At Mawna Chowrasta in Sreepur, Gazipur, a mobile court fined two diagnostic centres Tk 5,000 each and shut them for operating without approval. A third centre with an expired registration was fined Tk 3,000 and ordered to renew within three months.

A portal launched as the online edition of a planned daily closed in six and a half months with about 30 staff

The news portal Sarakkhon was launched in September 2020 as the online version of a planned daily newspaper. When the second Covid wave made the daily uncertain again, the owners, unwilling to carry the losses, shut the portal in April 2021.

Ran for

6 months

Started in 2020

750 sacks in the warehouse, 1,000 farmers at the gate: a fertiliser dealer loses Tk 15,000 when the fence is broken

In Rowmari, Kurigram, about 1,000 farmers gathered at a fertiliser dealer's warehouse and, amid pushing, broke the fence and door and took around 50 sacks. Equal union-wise allocation, sales points that open only every few days and supply below demand had built up the pressure on the dealer.

Coloured tomato sauce made without a food licence: Sakhipur factory fined Tk 3 lakh and shut

A factory in Sakhipur, Tangail, had long been making tomato sauce, juice, lassi and chanachur with colours and chemicals and selling them. A mobile court fined it Tk 3 lakh and shut it until it obtains a licence.

Tk 30 for a 19-litre jar, no licence: 48 jar-water firms fined and shut in three months, 20,000 jars destroyed

Countless jar-water firms have sprung up in Dhaka without BSTI approval; one study found faecal bacteria in 97 percent of jar water. In drives over the first three months of 2018, 48 firms were fined and shut and 33 people jailed.

Organic tea from barren Panchagarh land, sold as Kazi & Kazi at home and Teatulia in the US in 30-40 varieties

Tea from an organic garden started in Tetulia, Panchagarh, in 2000 is sold as Kazi & Kazi at home and Teatulia in the US. Attractive biodegradable packaging and marketing that tells the garden's story made it a premium brand.

Started in 2000

A 65-year tin-can coconut oil market lost: oil spoiled in plastic bottles, and learning the technology took 4-5 years

Local companies built tin-can coconut oil brands over decades but lost the market to a foreign company that arrived with plastic bottles in 2002. Local firms' bottled oil went bad before its expiry date and had to be withdrawn.