Kazi Saifuddin Munir

Kazi Saifuddin Munir turned a crisis into a perfect opportunity.

He spent two decades in Sweden before coming back to his homeland in 1999. He worked very briefly as a consultant for computerisation in the largest state-owned Sonali Bank in 1999. He was surprised to see people in the bank did not even understand the Windows operating system in those days.

“Then I went to Bangladesh Bank and told officials there that I wanted to work with the scheduled banks on building a common network and they agreed happily,” Munir, managing director of IT Consultants Ltd, recalled. “Then I hired four people and started the business of building a common payment processing consortium for banks, now known as Q-Cash.”

The country's first ICT award for his company, IT Consultants Ltd, illustrates the point. ITCL has been recognised as the best solution provider in the local market category.

Established in 2000, ITCL's Q-Cash is now the market leader in the rapidly evolving arena of electronic payment and transaction processing system. Three dozen banks are now ITCL's direct clients.

Q-Cash ATMs handle Tk 150 crore to Tk 200 crore every day and the transactions go up to Tk 400 crore a day during the Eid festivals.

ITCL has employed over 350 people, with 88 percent technical. ITCL also got listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange last year. The company recorded Tk 8.8 crore in net profit and paid its shareholders 15 percent stock dividends.