The Dhaka Fintech Revolution
With over 50 million bKash users and a wave of new apps targeting the unbanked, Bangladesh is quietly building one of the world's most innovative financial technology ecosystems.
Rafiq Hasan9 min read
tech
Dhaka Levels Up
Bangladesh's booming esports and game development scene
Arif Chowdhury
Senior Writer
12 September 20266 min read
From mobile gaming to world-class esports tournaments, Bangladesh's gaming industry is growing at 40% annually — and attracting serious investment.
In a Gulshan apartment that doubles as a studio, six young men are building a video game. Their project — a mobile RPG set in the world of Bengali folklore, with a yaksha as the protagonist and the Sundarbans as the stage — has already attracted $200,000 in pre-seed funding.
"Everywhere you look in Western gaming, you see European mythology. Norse, Greek, Roman," says lead developer Siyam Ahmed. "We wanted to build for the 170 million people who grew up on entirely different stories."
Games like theirs represent the leading edge of a Bangladeshi gaming industry that is growing at roughly 40% annually, according to the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS).
#gaming#esports#startups#culture