Bangladesh is the next tech hub
The star of Digital World 2014 was Morten Lund, co-founder of Skype and Coders Trust. Packed with sessions back to back, this serial investor shared with The Daily Star his visions involving Bangladesh.
DS: What's your venture involving Bangladesh?
Currently we are setting up an office of Coders Trust. Coders Trust is an initiative by Danida, (Danish International Development Agency). It provides microfinance for students in emerging nations who want to upgrade their programming skills. For local support, we have teamed up with Grameen Solutions.
DS: Tell us how 'Coders Trust' works
Basically what we do is we find out the smart kids from online outsourcing portals like Elance and Odesk. We check out their rating to find how good they are doing. If their ratings are impressive, we hire them and educate them to do even higher quality work at a better rate. We have the first 100 coders on our platform. We are sponsoring $200 per month. I am in a facebook group with them, I follow them regularly. And the synergy that I experience is really amazing!
DS: Why Bangladesh?
Due to our access to the Elance and oDesk insights, we have seen a great number of Bangladeshis working online. Despite their talent and work-ethic, they are lagging a bit behind in terms of payment rate. So we intend to train them and educate them to improve the quality of the work that they are doing.
DS: Beside Coders Trust what else are you working on?
I am actually working on the banking and finance industry now. Primarily I am working on Tradeshift. It's an invoice network. It is in-fact the largest electronic invoice network of the world. We invoice Nike and British Government among others.
DS: Has this four-day expo shown any opportunities?
I have seen a huge crowd of hungry and positive and energetic people. I am really impressed. I haven't seen such aggressive competition. Compared to the other parts of this region the kids seem to be a lot more extrovert. They actually grabbed me and asked me how to work on technology. I liked that. Seeing this crowd I believe miracles will happen in this country. There is no doubt that it's going to grow in an exponential rate. I discuss with my kids and my partners that we should move in this region because the growth in the European region has gone down.
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