Synesis IT in a nutshell
Synesis IT ltd is a CMMI level 03 certified company, with over 350 employees that's' been working for over 12 years with clients such as the Government, private sector and corporates to provide value driven solution to their problems with the help of information technology.
Synesis IT specialises in 4 areas, i) e-Governance, ii) e-Health & m-Health, iii) Call Center Solutions, iv) Business facilitation through Tender Bazar and v) High quality monitoring, evaluation & research for supporting business and services to population.
Shohrab Ahmed, the Managing Director of the tech firm, graduated from BUET and even though he majored in EEE, he had always been very passionate about software and programming. This passion made him start his career at the public sector, where he worked with tech in the health and education sectors for over 5 years. He wanted to do more and start his own company, and soon enough, he found an investor who had the same vision he did regarding the IT sector in Bangladesh, and finally in 2006, Synesis IT came to be.
At the beginning of their journey, Synesis IT faced its share of hurdles. Initially their plan was to launch a CRM software for the USA market, but that wasn't as successful as expected, because of the economic turmoil and recession affecting the American market.
Utilising previous connections they had, they went to joint venture with private companies, but he understood that in order to sustain themselves, they needed a source of recurring income. He realised that Bangladesh had a huge gap in terms of having enough doctors, and started working on bdhealth.com, to be a complete health information depository, but that ended up less well received than expected. This is when he started to collaborate with Telcos to provide them with “over the phone” healthcare services or mobile health services. This was their big breakthrough, and soon after, they approached the government and launched the National Health Helpline, and have been working with various projects hereafter.
When asked about his biggest achievement Shohrab Ahmed replied that it has to be how his tech solutions help people and make their lives easier. Synesis IT has been a pioneer in the field of e-governance with more than 70 large scale projects such as E-TIN which has helped over 4.5 million people register for taxes online, or their upcoming project EKPAY which will enable people to make government bill payments using the internet.
They also run 15+ nationally important call centers, helping over 40,000 people every day, and their tenderbazar.com portal is the largest tender portal in the country aiming to make the entire tender process easier.
These tech based solutions not only make people's lives easier, hassle free but some of their software solutions, especially in the m-health sector, contribute directly to the MDG goals of the government. The IT industry has enormous potential, and is also earning significant foreign remittance, and is changing how people view Bangladesh globally, from a more labour based economy to a knowledge based one.
To grow the sector even more Shohrab Ahmed believes that there needs to be more skilled people coming into the sector, companies need to collaborate with the academic side, and the government should also promote the industry globally and go into “managed service” or partnership with IT companies.