Bangladesh to give seed funding for student, youth startup ideas
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Prime Minister’s Adviser Mahdi Amin said the government will provide startup and seed funding to implement the innovative ideas of students and young entrepreneurs to utilize the youth workforce and create employment.
He made these remarks while speaking as the chief guest at a panel session of the “Bangladesh AI Business Summit 2026” held at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Center (BCFCC) in Dhaka on Thursday.
The session titled “Industry-Academia Linkage: Application of AI in Business Innovation” was jointly organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI). Rizwan Rahman, former president of DCCI, delivered the welcome address and moderated the event.
Emphasizing the rapid creation of employment through the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Mahdi added, “If we can create 1,00,000 entrepreneurs and each of them creates employment for a few people on average, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created quickly. As part of this, seed funding will be provided to implement good ideas emerging from educational institutions and initiatives by entrepreneurs in the informal sector.”
Regarding local solutions to domestic problems, he noted, “Instead of bringing products or consultants from abroad, we must utilize our own talent. The government is working to build an appropriate ecosystem to prevent the country’s talented individuals from moving abroad and to utilize their skills for the welfare of the nation.
“Just as it is true that many traditional jobs will be abolished due to AI, new job opportunities will also be created in sectors like data annotation and AI applications. Therefore, academic curricula must be made more up-to-date to capture the new market.”
Speaking at the panel discussion, Simin Rahman, CEO of Transcom Group, said, “To bring about transformation in industry through the use of AI in Bangladesh, problems need to be specifically identified. There is no shortage of talented graduates in our country, but there is a lack of utilizing them to solve industry problems. In universities, there are insufficient incentives for faculty members for industry-related research, which is reducing research quality and interest.”
Syed Nasim Manzur, managing director of Apex Footwear Limited, added, “AI has created unprecedented opportunities to increase productivity and build a competitive industry in Bangladesh. It is essential to develop our own AI capability through coordination between industry and universities. The role of AI is not to replace humans, but rather to make workers more skilled. Youth should use AI to find solutions to real-world, field-level problems.”
Md Abdur Razzaque, chairman of the CSE Department at University of Dhaka, noted, “No software or system can be imagined without AI. Effective solutions to problems in various sectors, including agriculture and transportation, are possible through AI-driven solutions. However, there is a severe crisis of high-performance computing in universities. It is also difficult to obtain data from public and private organizations for research. In addition, collaboration from industry to increase students’ technical skills is relatively low.”
Muhammad Firoz Mridha, head of the CSE Department at American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB); Md Rahinur Rahman, student at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and Founder-CEO of Nevoli; and Tousiful Islam, student at Islamic University of Technology (IUT) and Founder-CEO of Ants, also spoke at the panel discussion.
