JU, Dream71 team up for Industry 4.0 products

A leading Bangladeshi software and app developer joined hands with Jahangirnagar University yesterday to explore technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), big data and the Internet of Things and develop products focusing on the fourth industrial revolution.

Rashad Kabir, managing director of Dream71 Bangladesh, and M Mesbahuddin Sarker, director of the JU's Institute of Information Technology (IIT), signed the agreement on the university campus.

Currently exporting to over nine countries and with offices in Bangladesh and Japan, the company plans availing the expertise and skills of faculty members to grab a bigger share of the international market.

“There is a skill gap in the industry and the memorandum of understanding will help minimise this gap,” said Kabir whose company is one of the industry's pioneers in the country.

He said they needed industry-academia collaborations, meaning engineers and developers working with experienced university professors, to grow together as it could be beneficial for both parties.

Having experience working with companies from Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Cameroon and Kenya, Kabir said they were already experiencing the effects of Industry 4.0, which is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies.

Bangladesh needed to start preparing itself right away if it has any interest in grabbing offshore markets that will come to dominate in the coming years, he said.

The IIT teachers said the AI has turned into a buzzword in the tech industry in recent days and over the next five to seven years the world was about to witness disruptive AI and machine learning technology that would change whole ecosystems.