Basis SoftExpo 2023: An exhibition promoting the next big leap

The largest ICT exhibition in the South Asian region, Basis SoftExpo 2023, will end in the capital on Sunday evening, leaving behind its ever shining marks in promoting the country's biggest leapfrogging potentials in terms of grabbing the demographic dividends and export diversification, rightly addressed by the government through targeting a $5 billion export of IT and ITES products and services.

Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) President Russel T Ahmed in exchange announced $20 billion export target by 2031 and gave a 3x3 formulae to achieve it.

 "The story is all about the next big leap," said Russel T Ahmed, the leader of the exhibition organiser.

The formulae include three sectors — the government, the industry and the academia working hand in hand, while three major tasks are product innovation, proper branding of the country and industry, and developing the human resource.

After apparel and manpower exports, IT and IT Enabled Services (ITES) is the third largest export sector right now as it almost doubled to $1.4 billion in the tough year of 2022, while in terms of dollar conservation the sector only contributes to the country's foreign currency reserve, he said.

Trained youth is the only raw material of the industry and it adds almost 100% value locally.

Bangladesh's journey towards a digital nation has been a tremendous success in the last decade and since 2017 it entered the process of going smart.

"Here lies the gigantic potential that one not associated with the industry would find hard to believe," said Ahmed during a conversation with The Business Standard on the sidelines of the four-day event.

The big market calling

Over 350 of the BASIS members are now exporting IT and ITES to around 80 countries, up from 250 companies exporting to half of the market before the pandemic, according to BASIS.

The US market where 34% of Bangladesh's IT and ITES exports are going nowadays has a shortage of around 3 million IT professionals, followed by the shortage of 1.5 million of the knowledge workers in the European Union, a million in the United Kingdom, 0.85 million in Japan.

India, effectively grabbing the opportunity, leads the global sources to cater to the rising demand in the world markets. Nowadays importers are strategically looking to diversify their sources.

That is why countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia are growing in their IT and ITES exports fast. Poland, Estonia and Ukraine have become favorites to the world's large importer firms.

Bangladeshi IT firms are grabbing a small share of the demand and the potentials are many times bigger, said ICT entrepreneurs.

A NASDAQ-listed giant web developer firm had a 2,500-member team in Ukraine and recently it was looking for an alternative as the war there forced the firm to shut operations while IT professionals went fighting for their motherland.

The company was looking to shift its Ukraine jobs to somewhere like Bangladesh and the local industry was not instantly ready to cater to them with so many professionals, according to sources.

Let's get onboard before the boat leaves the shore

The BASIS president is a bit on the optimistic side about the $5billion IT and ITES export target by 2025 as the Prime Minister and her ICT advisor are seriously guiding the sector.

Demand is there and it is only growing since the pandemic as the world's companies are embracing IT more and more, said Ahmed.

"We just need to get onboard in time before the boat leaves our shore," he said.

If the short-term target is missed for some reasons, the 2031 target will be achieved by Bangladesh, he sounds confident.

For that, the nation must go through rigorous research and SWOT (Strength, weakness, opportunity and threat) analysis so that no mistake or slack causes a missing of the opportunities to best utilise youth talent.

For instance, 15-16 years ago Bangladesh was hyped up for the online call center business forgetting the country was not producing enough English speaking workforce, something the Philippines and India do.

Bangladesh has successfully executed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Digital Bangladesh mission.

Meanwhile, the Philippines, moving fast in shifting towards software development from call center job creation boosted its ICT export revenue to $40 billion from some $4 billion a decade ago.

Vietnam is earning $16 billion from IT and ITES exports.

"Instead of complacency, we had better focus on the performance appraisal of the previous wave of our digital journey so that we learn how far we could have gone already and how much we have done," said Ahmed, the leader of the country's software and ITES entrepreneurs.

He suggests complete collaboration among policy makers, industry and academia that is a must to fully unlock potentials.

Having the right master plan and the execution roadmap, branding the country and the industry should be the first task as the world's buyers need to know Bangladeshi firms and their knowledge of workers' capabilities, according to him.

Then there need to be investments in a right way that yields the maximum in terms of building capacity to compete with other countries.

When the right steps result in abundant work orders from the global market, then the challenge related to abundant supply will arrive and it should be addressed immediately.

The skill gap and a supply shortage

Apparels are the largest job creating industry in the country.

IT and ITES, however, have emerged as the largest graduate job creator as the industry has already employed 0.15 million knowledge workers, while around 0.6 million are working as freelancers.

Every year, around 25 thousand IT graduates enter the industry but that is not enough for reaching the 2031 export goal, feels the BASIS President.

Right now, the workforce of 0.1 million is bringing $1 billion export income and the industry needs at least 1.5 million skilled people in 2031 to earn $20 billion.

ICT graduates in the pipeline alone are unlikely to fill the gap, which needs to be addressed in the interest of higher revenue tasks related to software and other high-end tasks.

The good thing is that a big workforce of non-ICT graduates also can be prepared for a better income from ICT and ITES-related work and support the industry target, said Russel T Ahmed.

For instance, India is serving 96% of the multibillion dollar global software testing market and one with a higher secondary school certificate can be trained for that in a year.

Ordinary graduates can learn graphic designing, web developing skills through proper training.

The government is spending gigantic sums to train the youth with necessary skills and the industry often finds them not skilled enough and they need on job training.

"70-80% jobs are found to be opened for the professionals having 2-3 year experiences, while 90% of the applications are from freshers," Ahmed said adding, the mismatch must be addressed.

He suggests government incentives to the industry for effectively training the freshers while the firms can be made accountable through some conditions, such as incentive being available if the trained worker earns a regular salary from the firm for a year.

"Vendor-centric training has its weakness, better let the industry train them."

Besides such government-private partnerships, academia should be in alignment with what the industry needs so that their graduates can have a stronger presence at work, he suggested.  

BASIS SoftExpo2023

BASIS SoftExpo this year has registered the highest ever participation from industry-related firms, professionals, policy makers, enthusiasts and also potential buyers.

Over 200 Bangladeshi firms are showcasing their IT and ITES products and services.

Starting at 10.00 am on 23 February at Bangabandhu Bangladesh-China Friendship Exhibition Center, Purbachal, in Dhaka the show and get together of thousands of ICT professionals is set to end at 8.00 pm on 26 February.

Besides so many awareness-creating events and thought provoking seminars every day, the exhibition comes live and engaging through the job fair, career camps, B2B matchmaking, freelancing conference, startup conference, developers' conference, women in IT program, ministerial conference, and ambassadors' night.

Besides, the exhibition venue has had so many arrangements to attract smart youth which the BASIS believes are the key to the next big leap towards a smart Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi firms with the help of skilled local youth are running so many critical smart functions in the developed world, beating their global competitors in securing work contracts.