IT: the best place for women

Luna Shamsuddoha has been leading the country's top software firm—Dohatec New Media—for the last 25 years, and her outsourcing company mainly did business with the US.

By growing the business here, Shamsuddoha is spreading the country's reputation across the region by developing software of global standards.

“The opportunity was tremendous when we started, and we tried to capitalise on that,” she said.

The software company developed the electronic government procurement (e-GP) system, which has digitised the country's procurement system; 52,000 tenders have already been awarded through the online system.

The firm is now set to develop the e-GP system for Bhutan, which will be launched by June. The company has also participated in a tender to develop Uganda's e-GP system as well, which is currently being evaluated.

The company currently employs 200 engineers.

Earlier, Dohatec developed Bangladesh's voter identity registration and biometric matching system for eight crore people.

It also provided the Bangladesh army with the voter enrolment and identification software in 2007. The prototype comprised digital voter entry forms, including photos and fingerprints.

That was a huge task and Dohatec is proud to have pulled it off, said Shamsuddoha, also the vice-chair of the board of trustees at Independent University Bangladesh.

Since inception in 1992, the company has been supporting the government's birth and death registration projects as well.

In 2001-02, Dohatec developed the United States Postal Service's online mail-tracking system with Harte-Hanks Inc. It is a fully web-enabled database capable of handling millions of records in a barcode system.

ICT is absolutely the best medium for work for women to be successful, said Shamsuddoha, who has also served Agrani Bank as a director since 2009 to 2012.

“Without discriminating any gender, I can say there is no alternative to learning and becoming capable.”

She was also the founder and president of Bangladesh Women in Technology, a forum to empower women through technology and encourage girls to study and pursue career in technology.