It was a wonderful feeling to launch our new office in Dhaka and the Swedish ambassador Britt F. Hagström honored us with her presence.
But the time before the inauguration has consisted of setbacks.
-We got trouble right from the start, says the Managing director Muhammed Jihad.
To finish the general company registrations with all necessary permits, certificates and VAT took almost 3 months and many, many different authorities were involved. A sad fact is that bribery is common and sometimes a necessity to come forward in the process, but thanks to local contacts, we did not have to go through any of that.
To start up the new office did not go according to plans either, there were huge delays with important supplies. For example, when our office furniture were delivered they had the wrong dimensions, and we had to accept that we had not received the furniture we had ordered.
However, our staff recruitment has gone well. Lots of skilled people in the IT field have applied to work with us, which is an important success. There were a lot of applications, which is not surprising due to the population. There are over 161 million people in Bangladesh and in the capital Dhaka, there are over 7 million.
We have employed a majority of designers and programmers and we will always have English-speaking people in place in order to secure the communication with our Swedish customers.
Our business model is based on that Nordic and European companies should make use of our attractive outsourcing service. We offer qualified designers and programmers on a full or half-time basis. The cost is 150 SEK per hour.
Our working time is synchronized with Swedish time Monday to Friday. This means that our office is always open when, for example, our Swedish customers need to contact us.
The Dhaka office is a typical modern "Swedish" office, where broadband, ultramodern high-performance computers, air-condition and electricity backups are present.
Cecilia Helland