An Opportunity for Grassroots Innovators in Bangladesh

They are looking for grassroots innovations from across Bangladesh to feature at Future Startup.

The selected innovations will receive several benefits:

• extensive coverage from Future Startup, such as feature articles and interviews
• access to Future Startup’s network on request
• and they plan to connect selected innovations with incubators, mentors, and other opportunities in the future.

Sectors

Ideas can come from any sector including but not limited to:

• Agriculture, from farming to machinery
• Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WASH)
• Engineering
• Healthcare including Women’s Health
• Education
• Tourism
• Employment
• Culture
• Community development, etc.
• Climate change
• Livelihood
• Local problem solving
• Any other initiatives and solutions addressing local development challenges anywhere in Bangladesh

Why You Should Care?

• The stories are read by the most important people in the business and technology ecosystem in Bangladesh, the likes of entrepreneurs, investors, founders, policymakers, and people with deep curiosities in business and technology who can make a difference for your business.
• The stories almost 70% of the time get followed up by further media coverage from mainstream newspapers like DS, TBS, and DT.
• They give you a chance to reach out to early adopters and the most influential, affluent, tech-savvy but notoriously difficult-to-reach content consumers in Bangladesh.
• The stories can bring opportunities from stakeholders and the market such as incubators, investors, supporters, etc.

Criteria

• Grassroots innovations are ideas, products, services, processes/practices, community initiative models, or methods that address a local problem, needs, or a development challenge in a new or more effective way by using local resources.
• One defining feature is that these innovations are usually created by people or communities who are affected by the problems themselves, which makes them more likely to find meaningful solutions.
• They expect that these innovations can address social/market/developmental challenges in ways that traditional top-down solutions may not. They appreciate it if a grassroots innovation has the potential for scalability and can be replicated but it is not a must-have criteria.
• However, they don’t suggest an exact definition for grassroots innovations. They are looking for all kinds of ideas and initiatives. An initiative can be:
  • For-profit business
  • Non-profit
  • Community, or individual initiatives.

For more information Future Startup.