Jay:  My guest today is Maliha Quadir, founder of Shohoz, a startup based in Bangladesh, providing a super app that currently offers three core services: ridesharing, deliveries, and travel event ticketing. Maliha, welcome to the show.

Maliha:  Thank you so much. Excited to be here.

Jay:  Yes, and you are one of the first entrepreneurs from Bangladesh. I think, we’ve had one other person on from Bangladesh, but from my audience, I think they’ll be quite interested in your story and what you have to say, because I think that there’s not a lot of people that have investors and the like and have actually looked into Bangladesh, which is probably why there’s an exciting opportunity for you there.

Maybe you can begin with a background of yourself, where you’re from, where you came up, maybe you did some other things previously in your career, and how you became an entrepreneur.

Maliha:  Sure. I grew up in Bangladesh. I went through the British system of education. Then went to Smith College in the U.S., where I did economics and computer science. After that, I worked for Morgan Stanley in the analyst’s program in New York and San Francisco. Then went to Harvard for my MBA.

In between my MBA, I had a one-year stint in Bangladesh, where I had launched the country’s first classifieds. That was a great experience which convinced me that I wanted to come back someday and work in tech, and work in tech entrepreneurship in Bangladesh.

So I went back, finished my HBS MBA, and then moved to Singapore, where I worked for Standard Chartered Bank briefly. Mostly, I worked for Nokia and an e-commerce company called Vistaprint.

I was in Singapore for around five-and-a-half years. During this time, it was now or never. I was looking at the internet landscape, looking at what makes sense from a business perspective to start with. The internet at that time, five years back, the internet startup world in Bangladesh was at its infancy. We were going to be one of the first startups.

After doing all kinds of analysis, I started Shohoz. Shohoz means easy. It’s a very broad name. The goal was always to build up the largest online destination for Bangladesh, which is a bit of a prodigious vision.

We decided to focus somewhere, so we started with the travel segment because I always wanted to start and focus on things that were more of a necessity. From that perspective, travel, transportation, these are necessities. That’s how Shohoz was born as a bus-ticketing company, long-distance bus ticketing company.

Jay:  I see. That’s a good background. For me personally as well as many of our guests, and also the audience members, a lot of people begin their careers working at some sort of corporate or banking. It always excites me to hear about entrepreneurs that are able to successfully break free and become entrepreneurs and build a company, because many of us, myself included, have never had the courage or the wherewithal to do that. So congratulations on breaking free and starting an amazing company, what sounds like an amazing company.

Your classifieds business, is that still around, or was that a short-term project that you were working on?

Maliha:  No. It was part of a big NGO, actually, BRAC, and they decided to close it after I left. This was before classifieds was born, which is a pity because we were doing well. But, it’s in the bigger strategy, priorities they had. They decided to stop it after I left. But it was a very good learning experience for me and something that is also very fulfilling.

That move you’re talking about from corporate to startup is tough. After you work for ten years, you do have to think through because it’s a big career move, and startups are, by definition, very risky. But what helped me decide on that is an incident I had while working in that startup. Classifieds means you’re selling old stuff.

One day, somebody came to see me at the office, and I was just returned from America. I was very surprised. Why would a user come to see me? Then he came in, and he came to thank me because he sold an old refrigerator for 20,000 takas, and that helped him pay for his daughter’s tuition fee. And that was very moving for me.

That was really the moment I decided I was going to come back and work in something that makes a difference, which, to me, was technology. Because Craig’s List and all we use in the U.S. I never even thought that I was doing something so great in Bangladesh by starting its first classifieds. But it moved me because you can make so much difference.

So much to be done. The ecosystem was nascent at the time, and whatever you do could make such a big difference in a developing country. That, to me, was a good learning experience and a good turning point where I had made up my mind to come back.

Jay:  Right. Speaking of which, maybe you can give us a bit of background for the audience and for myself who don’t know much about the economy of Bangladesh. And what’s the environment there? What’s the infrastructure like? What are some of the challenges that you have to face there that maybe we take for granted in more modernized or developed worlds?

Maliha:  Bangladesh has around 170 million people. It’s the ninth largest, populous country in the world. Population-wise, it is the ninth-largest, so it is quite something; 170 million people living in one of the smallest countries in the world geographically. It’s densely populated, and perhaps the most densely populated country.

Young population — median age is 26. So around 85% of the population is below 54 years of age, which is a huge asset for any country, particularly people working in technology space. Mobile and internet penetration is growing rapidly — 160 million mobile subscribers. Forty percent smartphone penetration. And we have around 90 million internet users.

So it’s a very large market and because of favored policies and push from the government, internet penetration is also growing very, very fast. We’re adding around a million users every month to the internet.

It is quite amazing how far we have come and how much we have grown. GDP per Capita this year past 2,000. We’re just above 2,000 now. The most amazing story is that we have grown at around 6% to 7% year-on-year GDP growth for the last 14 years or so. That’s an amazing growth story of having consistent GDP growth of 6% to 7%. This year, we are projected to grow at 8%, which is, again, for sound economic policies and monetary policies that we have had that.

So Bangladesh is coming up. As you say, it’s not so known amongst the investing community. But in my five years of raising money for Shohoz and working – and we are fully funded by international investors — I have seen that landscape changing quite a bit. People are starting to look at Bangladesh opening up, particularly when they hear of the story of stable economic growth.

Also, we are a homogenous population. So many countries are big but have a lot of racial issues and all. Bangladesh doesn’t have that.

Jay:  Right. That’s a good background you gave. I think that it’s these little countries that have — I mean, 8% is incredible. You take that on a global scale, and there’s very few countries that can even rival that or come close. So I think that, obviously, you saw the great opportunity there from your home country.

You mentioned to me that Shohoz means easy. So you had this audacious goal of using the internet and the power of technology to make people’s lives easy. However, you began with…was ticketing the first vertical that you decided to tackle?

Maliha:  Yeah. See, I think transportation, logistics, movement is the backbone of an economy. People have to move. They don’t have a choice. They have to move. They have to eat. Those are basic necessities. And the faster you move, the faster they can all be moved. That was my premise.

So we started as a bus ticketing company, long-distance bus. Then we added ridesharing a year-and-a-half back. We’re in bike-based ridesharing in Dhaka and Chittagong. And we’ve added food delivery; so, movement of food. And food is something, a necessity; people eat every day.

By the way, in Bangladesh, I am very proud to say that women work. Most women work. Bangladesh has done very well in women’s development and the SDG, particularly as it pertains to women. So women work. When women work, women don’t have time to cook, and there’s a lot of demand for ordering online, ordering from our site. So food delivery it in a vertical we are very excited about.

The other recently launched a few weeks back is trucking. So you’re able to order trucks from the Shohoz app. So the underlying theme if you look across all these verticals is moving. Transportation, logistics, moving food, moving people, moving goods. So ridesharing, food delivery, long-distance bus and ferry tickets, and truck booking.

Jay:  Very interesting. It’s almost organic the bolt-on services that you can provide within this one transportation niche. Maybe you can tell us about the infrastructure there. You mentioned long-distance bus ticket. I guess that’s quite a popular mode of transportation there. Is there a railway? Is that common, and a lot of people own cars, or not a lot of people own cars? Maybe you can give us a bit of color there.

Maliha:  Sure. So for the sake of people who are listening, if you land in Bangladesh, it feels like India, I would say, if I were to draw a comparison. If you’re walking around in the streets, how does it feel like? Which country will you compare to and explain to somebody who hasn’t been to Bangladesh? It feels very much like India. The interesting thing is people sometimes have such a low opinion before coming, and they’re pleasantly surprised. “Oh, this normal country like it’s next door.”

In terms of infrastructure, long-distance bus is the most popular one. Car ownership is there, but car ownership is around 400,000 or 500,000 cars in the country. The popular mode of transportation for local as well is bus, and a subway is being built. The subway will take another three or four years to be operational, but the local subway is being built.

So ridesharing came as a relief to people who — there was serious pent-up demand for commute. Within the city, commute is quite challenged because of dearth of options. There are three-wheelers; there is car. There is the ride-sharing vehicles I mentioned. There is the local bus, and the subway is being built. But local transport is really a big hassle in the daily lives of people. The supply is really limited.

Things are being done to improve it, but that’s where the beauty of ridesharing comes in. I think in developing countries, ridesharing is more popular because of this infrastructure issues we have.

Jay:  Sure. Now, the ridesharing, is that in an automobile, or is it a bike?

Maliha:  We’re in bike. We are only in bike. Bike-based ridesharing. Yeah.

Jay:  As in a motorcycle-type thing?

Maliha:  Yeah. Motorcycle.

Jay:  It does make sense when I think about other developing economies. A lot of times, you do see a lot of motorcycles, mopeds, and this sort of thing. And it helps to maneuver in the city if the infrastructure is not in place.

Let’s talk about the app. Everything revolves around the app, I would think. Is that the main point of contact for the customer?

Maliha:  It depends on the service. For ridesharing, obviously, it’s the app. For food delivery, also the app. But our food web is also launching very soon. Tickets, we have seen split. We have both. We have app, and we have the website. People seem to like both. Truck is also app. Mainly, it’s the app, although, for tickets and for food, website is also important.

Jay:  Got it. Maybe you could walk us through the customer experience. I’m particularly interested in not only onboarding the customer with the app and the ease of use, but how you link the services together. Is there any loyalty program on your app? Then also, on the payment side, maybe you can talk to us about the payment culture there. Is digital payment fully integrated, or is it still a cash-based economy?

Maliha:  Digital payments has done pretty well in Bangladesh. There is a company called Wecash, where Alibaba invested. It’s very popular. There’s a bunch of other mobile payment companies as well — Rocket and others. So for us, depending on the service, again, we see different preferences.

We do push digital payments quite a bit because it makes life easier. Both digital payments and cash-on-delivery are popular. Credit card penetration is obviously low in that. So the app user experience is a very standard experience. For example, in ridesharing, food delivery, even ticket purchasing, there is a globally standard three-step way people buy tickets. People buy, people book rides, or people order food. So we have followed that.

Truck booking is also common. Truck booking is, obviously, new with a lot of iterations that are happening on the product experience.

So we have the standard experiences. We do offer people the touch. They have the ability to call and talk. We have our own customer care center. We have seen people in Bangladesh like that.

There are little experiences in the user flow, which are more local in feeling — the icons, the way we interact, the words. Those have been localized. But we’re also internally working on a big localization drive through proper research and all. That’s something we’re starting to localize and add more Bangladeshi feeling to our app now.

Jay:  Let’s say I download the app, and I log on. Am I immediately given all the different options, as in food delivery?

Maliha:  Yeah.

Jay:  So, from the beginning, I have the choice, and I can select which one of the services that I want.

Maliha:  Yes.

Jay:  So the same thing. Set up a profile, and then select the service. And then, is a credit card linked? How does the payment side work there?

Maliha:  Payment, you can’t really store users’ credit card information in Bangladesh. They’re starting to look into it. So you can’t store. You would have to enter it. It’s a standard process. It’s linked to the mobile payments. You can go through the links and pay through your mobile wallet, or you enter your credit card information, and you pay. It’s a standard user-flow like anywhere else.

Jay:  Right. That’s interesting. For me, I use this as a personal comparison. Say an Uber, when I get in Uber, hail an Uber, I love the technology. It’s brilliant, and it saves me a lot of time. But once every five or six rides, or maybe it’s more — maybe I’m exaggerating — but you’ll get the driver that doesn’t show up or someone that takes the wrong road, or it takes longer where I could have taken a taxi, or I could have walked. They have the feedback system where you can rate the drivers. Do you guys have that embedded into your system?

Maliha:  Absolutely. Yeah. We take quality seriously, so we have a rating system. When I said “standard,” there’s a map, and you can see the route. If the driver doesn’t show up, at the end of a trip, you can rate him. You can put in reasons for why you are upset or happy. So all that is there. We focus on rider quality and ensuring that riders have documentation.

Also, we are required by law, also to store information on the routes for X number of months so that if something happens, we can share with the regulatory authorities. We also have integration with the local… We’re also integrating — all of us ridesharing — are integrating with the local 999 number, which is the emergency number as well for safety reasons.

Jay:  Right. Then finally, on that side, the revenue model of your service. Is it a fee based off of whatever service that you are providing?

Maliha:  We take a commission. We take a commission from the drivers for helping them find rides. We get commission from bus operators. We get commission from restaurants. In some cases, we charge extra fees where the commission isn’t enough for the sustainability of the business. For example, in bus ticket, we charge a convenience fee as well. In truck, also similarly, we charge a commission. So it’s a commission-based model.

Jay:  Jumping quickly back to the quality control. When you’re onboarding — not users, but say, service providers, so whether it be a driver or a courier — what measures do you have in place to ensure that you’re getting the highest quality people that are working for you. You hear the one-off horror stories. Again, I’m using Uber as an example. I think that would be most relatable to the audience.

Maliha:  Yeah. We check the documents, and we are quite careful. You can imagine, in Bangladesh documents aren’t easy always to find. So we try to check and ensure that they have all the valid licenses and whatnot for that for that. Then we give them a training. We talk about… The government also pushes us to give proper training to them. Training on road safety.

You may have heard of BRAC, the largest NGO. We engage with them on giving road safety training to our drivers. That’s basically free of charge to our drivers. We also give helmets to our drivers. We have internal systems where we monitor the speed at which they’re going — distance, travel time, and all that. And we give feedback regularly for that.

Then we have to rely on customer complaints on giving feedback, because no matter how much we train somebody, at that moment on the road, what he’s doing is not in the hands of any ridesharing company. You can’t immediately… You can do it once you hear about it, but we can’t go and see what he’s doing there.

We do have the speeding data and all, which we view and give feedback on.

But in Bangladesh, overall, I think there had been discussions on road safety. The government is proactive about it. We are working with BRAC, I mentioned, which is proactive in road safety. There’s also been a lot of awareness amongst the general public on using helmets and all, because bike-based ridesharing is new in Bangladesh. So generally, we raise an awareness. And in that, we work with all the authorities, the newspapers, and all in raising more awareness about road safety.

Jay:  Right. The helmet thing — I’ve seen your helmets on your websites. It’s brilliant marketing, as well.

Maliha:  It is. It is marketing, but it is also a necessity for people. Before one year back, people weren’t using helmets as much. Then all the work we’ve been doing on road safety, and us as different industry players along with the government, the newspapers and all has brought about a good change. That was good to see that kind of improvement happen so fast in the country.

Jay:  Absolutely. Maliha, you are a sole founder. Is that right? Tell us about your team. Who did you bring on first initially? Tell us a funny story about the early days, and then how you’ve expanded now. How many employees do you guys have now?

Maliha:  We did literally start on my dining table when I moved back to Bangladesh. I am a sole founder, and that’s tough. Being a sole founder is tough. Because I didn’t find anybody else, I’m a sole founder. Usually, it’s a tech person and you. The first person to hire was the engineers.

I have a couple of people from India, as well, working at Shohoz. I found my CTO by luck. I put an ad on Naukri.com in India, and it was like God aligned the stars together. So it’s a bit of luck, also, you need in entrepreneurship.

Hiring and finding good people, I think, is where entrepreneurs should invest a lot of time. It’s an ongoing thing because hiring good people in Bangladesh, as it is, is difficult finding good people who know the kind of stuff we’re talking is tough. Then on top, as a startup, you have many limitations on salary you can offer.

And big exits haven’t happened in Bangladesh yet. So people aren’t that motivated by equity either. So it’s challenging. I think, for me, my family’s been in business here for a long time. Then, plus, my work experience and all helped us find some good people. We have around 300 people now, and I feel like we are short-staffed because there’s always so much happening in a startup.

But my lesson has been that it is also important to hire, because as an entrepreneur, every day you’re thinking between how much you want to burn and what output you are getting — fundraising time, and then all kinds of things. But it is important to also not hold back on hiring. It is important to get the right people on board.

We have found right people from many different walks. I found right people. One of my HBS lessons that I remember is, try to hire people not from exactly the same job they have done before per se, but more looking to the kind of situation they have been in, in their previous job. So, for example, startups are very chaotic. You can’t predict much about your day in a startup, a week, let alone a month.

So people who can handle chaos and people who thrive in chaos and fixing stuff, they get energized by it are the right people to find in a startup. So if I hire from a corporate, I try to look for people who worked in a new seed-stage venture within a corporate where they had to go through all kinds of ambiguity and set things up.

So I think hiring is tough, and at Shohoz, we have attracted some good people. These good people come from many different walks of life. Rarely big corporates — more people who have the entrepreneurial fire. More people who have tried to do things on their own, be it within a corporate, rarely, like one or two, or mostly by themselves. That’s where I think we have found the best people.

Jay:  It certainly seems like it’s paying off. You guys have done extremely well. I know that 500 Startups has invested in you guys. You guys did quite a large round at the end of last year. I’m friendly with the 500 team there, who are people that introduced me to you. It seems there’s a lot of interest from international investors. Maybe you can tell us about some of the investors that have supported your growth thus far.

Maliha:  Sure. So I got lucky. I would say it was a lot of luck through a lot of hard work, because none of my investors have invested in Bangladesh before. So Shohoz was their first investment. From the get-go, we went through angel rounds, seed rounds, Series A round, and all were international investors. So angels, like people working in tech companies, somebody who had founded big tech companies in the past, they have invested from the angel side. On the VC space, 500 Startups, we are very fortunate to have them.

We also have Vostok New Ventures, which is a Swedish venture capital fund. They have invested in us. They are the largest investor that has invested. There’s Golden Gate Ventures of Singapore that invested in us. And there’s a bunch of other — couple from family offices and mainly smaller VC shops that have also invested. Yeah, I know we’ve been lucky to have good people with us.

Jay:  Very exciting. Luck and a lot of hard work, as you said earlier. So you started in Dhaka. How many different cities, now, are you in across Bangladesh?

Maliha:  We are in Dhaka and Chittagong.

Jay:  Okay. Chittagong. Right. And tell us about your current 2019 and maybe looking into next year, your future goals. Obviously, it seems you guys have this hockey-stick-type growth time. International investors are clamoring to get in. You’re hiring very well. You’re growing your company. What are some of the exciting things that you have in the next 12 to 18 months that we can keep an eye out for in the news to hear about from you?

Maliha:  We have a lot going on already with four business verticals — tickets, ridesharing, food, and truck. So we want to focus in growing these businesses because each one of them is like a startup. We believe in the super app concept where data is the king, and we can cross-fertilize the different services. So the idea is to execute on that vision, grow the business lines, all four of them, and grow them in a sustainable manner as well.

And from a product perspective, like I mentioned before, we will focus a lot on localization and bring research and all. Also, like getting the house more in order. You can imagine four services launched so fast, chaos happens inside, so getting those things more organized internally, strengthening the operations and customer care, working more on a cohesive brand story. Those are things we are working on. So it’s to grow the four verticals.

There’s always an inkling to start something new when ideas keep on coming, but we want to stay focused and establish these four verticals before thinking of anything new.

Jay:  It’s the superman syndrome or the entrepreneur’s curse, I suppose. When you have something that you’re working on, you always find all these other ideas that could perfectly bolt-on. But oftentimes, I think your approach is the right one to double, triple-down on your strengths and just really master those.

Maliha, thank you so much for the time. It’s been very interesting learning about not only your company but also Bangladesh as a whole. I think that it’s a new area of study for a lot of our audience listening in. I have a couple of final questions. The second to the last one that I like to ask a lot of entrepreneurs and particularly, someone as yourself who is, as we discussed earlier, come out from the corporate rat race and started your own company, let’s say there’s a young aspiring entrepreneur listening in, perhaps maybe someone from Bangladesh, the country itself, that’s looking to come in and find something to disrupt and take the leap of faith. What piece of advice could you give this person?

Maliha:  Think through it. Entrepreneurship from outside all sounds great, but it’s a big responsibility. And there’s a lot of risks, so there’s a lot of ups and downs. So serious resilience is needed. There are days that are good; there are days that are not so good. But you have to keep your goalposts there. Keep your goal in mind and work like a dog.

It requires a lot of character resilience, as in, you have to have a lot of faith in your vision, faith in yourself. And it’s a balancing act on a daily basis because you’re constantly thinking, “Should I spend this much here or should I do it there?” And decisions can be wrong. Decisions better be right, as well.

So it’s a very tough, and it’s a long path. For people working from Bangladesh, we don’t have the mindset that things are going to happen in two or three years. It’s going to take a while because while internet penetration is growing, our GDP per capita is 2000, and the country is in the right track, but this is not like the U.S. market where you can start something and in a year sell it off and become rich.

The other thing, to me, is also that being rich, I would say to any entrepreneur, that shouldn’t be the motivation why you come to it because then you will never attain it. It’s you have to feel passionate. Because of the resiliency you need in making startups work, you have to be extremely passionate — extremely passionate.

I mean, I worked 24/7 almost. So you have to have that kind of passion and vision to execute on it. Your heart has to be in it full-time.

Jay:  That’s very good advice. This is often echoed from many successful entrepreneurs, but I think someone that hasn’t experienced it doesn’t know how difficult it actually is. I think that there’s a honeymoon period. Maybe your first couple of years when you’re starting a company, you’re all excited, and yeah, you can go on without money, and you’re still excited — still motivated. But are you still going to be there five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years down the line? When there’s still no money, then that’s a true testament to if you’re committed and passionate, as you said about your project. Right?

Maliha:  Yeah. But it’s very rewarding. I want to end on a positive note as well. It is very rewarding because you’re truly making a difference. You can see the difference of the work you are doing. And you know the joy of creating something — nothing beats it in my mind. So you have to have the passion to want to create something.

Jay:  That’s right. Legacy is also a big thing, and I think that as someone that’s more experienced, that does matter. Maybe at a younger age, some of the younger entrepreneurs don’t care as much about that, but I can say for myself, as I get older, that’s something I think about.

The last question for you, Maliha, is, where can people find you and follow you and learn more about you as an entrepreneur and your company, Shohoz?

Maliha:  LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place. Shohoz is also active on Facebook. For myself, I prefer… I’m active on LinkedIn.

Jay:  Fantastic. So we’ll get that linked up in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time and for your insights. You’ve provided a lot of great insights about your company, about the country, and also a lot of good advice, free advice that you gave unsolicited. So thank you for that.

Maliha:  Jay, thank you so much. This was really wonderful.

Jay:  Yeah. Absolutely. We’re looking forward to tracking your company, and I’m certain that you’re going to be successful. I can’t wait to read more and more positive news about you going forward.

Maliha:  Fingers crossed. Thank you so much.

Jay:  All right. Take care.

Maliha:  This was fun. Take care.

Jay:  Bye.

Maliha:  Bye.