DHAKA, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Bangladeshi state-owned mobile money carrier Nagad has emerged as a unicorn startup only in four years of its journey, becoming the fastest one in Bangladesh to reach this remarkable feat.
In recognition of the achievement, Tanvir A Mishuk, Nagad's managing director and founder, received the "Fastest to Unicorn Award" from Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the inaugural ceremony of the two-day "Bangladesh Startup Summit 2023" in Dhaka on Saturday.
Startup Bangladesh Limited, the flagship venture capital company of the Information and Communication Technology Division of the Bangladesh government, organised the ceremony to honour startups. And Nagad, embarked on its journey in March 2019, was the first startup in Bangladesh to have got this unicorn recognition.
The term unicorn refers to a privately held startup company with a value of over one billion U.S. dollars. Currently, there are around 1,200 unicorn startups in the world.
Nagad has reshaped the country's MFS (mobile financial services) industry with one after another disruptive innovation and inspired confidence among people to embrace its products and services that are convenient and affordable.
To grow into a complete financial solution, the MFS provider said it is going to establish a digital bank that will make available all financial services on a single platform, with the aim of taking the company's valuation to two billion U.S. dollars.
In four years of its journey, Nagad's registered customers now stand at 80 million, with its daily transactions hitting more than 1.2 billion taka on average. (1 U.S. dollar equals to about 108 taka). ■
