Information Communication Technology related Project Ideas and paths to Startup

There has been a lot of talk and enthusiasm going on in Bangladesh now a day with respect to Equity Entrepreneurs Fund aka EEF to establish IT industries in Bangladesh.

I tried to come up with some ICT project ideas which I would like to share with you. These ideas may not directly fall in the EEF category; however if any of my expatriate friend want o go back to Bangladesh to start a new venture or my old pals in Dhaka would like to start something different, they may like this list. This is not at all a complete list. I will try to add to it every now and then.

1. Security monitoring and first response initiation over the internet.
2. Online Math and Science Tutoring for High school students in US.
3. Online trucking/goods shipping reservation facility for nationwide faster goods movement.
4. Micro-credit for laptop purchases for every University admitted student in Bangladesh.
5. RMG intranet for capacity and recourses sharing for maximizing throughput.
6. Online auction of excess or minor rejected RMG products. (Govt. need liberalization)
7. Consumer Pricing Interactive Information broadcasting system.
8. Intranet for Universities and dedicated network for all students.

Consumer Pricing Interactive Information broadcasting system: The ultimate goal of this project is to have self sustaining free market price stability for consumer goods. This system will share instantaneous market valuation of major consumer good in major shopping zone throughout the country and thereby adjust the price fluctuation or price hike. In a very high level, the system will be integrated in the following architecture.

Each vendor will have a secure ID and product code. At any point of time during the business hour, the vendor will enter his asking price of a specific item. That information will store in a server and broadcasted to multiple billboards throughout the country to major market place like Sowary Ghat, Moluvi Bazzar, Chalk Bazzar, Kawran Bazzar, Gabtoli and likes. Now the vendor’s security ID may be his personal cell phone. Once he called to that specific server and entered his product code, the program will pick up the bid and broadcast it to the billboard as a cron job. Now if you paid careful attention you already figure out that any customer will be able to access that bid through their cell phone from that server. The transaction will happen as usual with the vendor and customer in the respected business site or over cell phone. You have the luxury to scale the system based on your investment or availability of funding. How you make money out of this? That is a trade secret. Be innovative or hire innovator.

Security monitoring and first response initiation over the internet: The availability of submarine cable enable us to video monitoring in real-time. Bangladesh can utilize the cheap labor to compete this field with countries around the world. Let us consider a case study. A specific business area/entity in Santa Clara, California USA, needs to monitor 24/7. There are 100 security cameras in the facilities. In the security control room there are 12 monitor screens each displaying 9 cameras per screen. Assume there are 2 security officers in the security control room, each responsible for 6 monitors. There are two security patrols in the field. If any suspicious activity takes place, then security officers in the control room dispatch massages to the patrolling guards.
In this case study, you can relocate the entire security control room Khulna, Bangladesh.
You may train and setup security monitoring cells. They will watch the facilities 24/7 and in any suspicious activity they will dispatch to the security patrols for immediate action. You can do it profitably in less than 25% of that operating cost of Santa Clara, California.
Once you have one customer happy and satisfied, you will get 20 more customers to be a mega security center and may further reduce the cost and enlighten your customer. In addition, companies that could not afford security center will be able to do it as the cost is down. Hence the market will get bigger.

I will continue to add more details on the remaining projects.

Prospect: Intel Corporation in Bangladesh – What can we learn from Vietnam?

If you are a policy maker for the future direction of Bangladesh, you might want to look at the following five facts:

1. 
   Starting a tiny sales office during 1997, Intel Corporation becomes the biggest foreign direct investor with 1 Billion USD in Vietnam in 2006.
2. 
   Employee growth exploded from few sales and support to a staggering ~4000 heads of high paying skill jobs.
3. 
   Intel Corporation directly investing to the local companies and incubators as well as the stock market.
4. 
   Partnering with NGO’s and Government to improve education sector and helping PC ownership.
5. 
   Indirectly bringing many more business as upstream and downstream partners and suppliers and customers are coming.

Intel Corporation entered the Vietnam market in 1997. Initial engagement was a sales office staffed by few employees and few thousand USD. Now in Vietnam Intel has Assembly and Test facility which will employ 4000 employee by 2009. Feb. 28, 2006 – Intel Corporation announced it will invest $300 million (US) to build a semiconductor assembly and test facility in Ho Chi Minh City. However, Nov. 10, 2006 – Intel Corporation raise its investment from the USD$300 million to USD$1 billion. The investment growth is phenomenon.

"Intel has enjoyed a strong, constructive working relationship with the Vietnam government, both at the local and national levels," said Rick Howarth, general manager of Intel Products Vietnam. "We were very pleased that the discussions with the local authorities went smoothly so we could significantly expand the facility's size." The size increased from 150,000 square feet to 500,000 square feet.

For its part, the government of Vietnam is offering Intel incentives to locate there, including the promise of inexpensive electrical power and upgraded local transportation networks to get the plant's thousands of workers to and from their job. The result will be a highly cost-effective facility for Intel.

Intel’s investment triggered a domino effect of FDI. "The real 'Intel effect' is starting to occur," says Henry Nguyen, managing partner at IDG Ventures Vietnam. "Upstream and downstream partners and suppliers and customers it needs are coming."

"In February 2006, Canon, Inc. announced it was spending $110 million on an ink jet printer factory near Hanoi," Business Week reported. "Nidec Corp of Japan plans to build two plants to make electronic components, at a total cost of $940 million. Fujitsu Ltd. has invested $200 million and employs 3,200 people making circuit boards for PCs and phones. Virginia-based utility AES Corp. is negotiating to build a 1,000-megawatt power plant in the northern province of Quang Ninh that could cost as much as $1 billion. And Cisco System, Nortel Networks and Motorola are installing telecom equipment."

Foxconn of Taiwan, also known as Hon Hai, the world's largest contract manufacturer -- with clients like Hewlett Packard (HP), Dell [DELL], and Apple [AAPL] -- has applied for a license to invest up to $5 billion. It plans to manufacture electronics and computer products including digital cameras, personal computer printed circuit motherboards, and music players. Compal Electronics has unveiled plans to invest $500 million to build notebook PCs in Vietnam. It also plans to expand into LCD TVs, said Chairman Rock Hsu Sheng-Hsiung at an annual shareholders meeting in June. Compal is expected to receive its investment license this month.

A June report by industry research group iSuppli predicts that contract manufacturing in Vietnam will grow more than 100% annually between 2006 and 2011. The sector is expected to explode from $36 million in 2006 to as much as $1.8 billion by 2011 as more major manufacturers move in, making it the fastest-growing sector in the area. The most recent example of this trend is Jabil Circuit (JBL) of St. Petersburg, Fla., which in June began operations at its facility in Saigon Hi-Tech Park in Ho Chi Minh City, where it makes laser printers for HP. Jabil plans to spend up to $100 million on its operations in Vietnam, which is increasingly seen as an alternative to China.

At the end of July 2007 South Korea’s direct investment in Vietnam reached 10.33 billion dollars, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. Singapore was second with 9.69 billion dollars, followed by Taiwan with 9.1 billion dollars.

If you follow the domino effect above, you will notice that starting from microprocessor packaging, motherboard, components, system, display, accessories all upstream and downstream partners are coming to the proximity to work collectively which will deliver a highly cost effective profitable product. That is globalization at work fueled by capitalism.

To summarize, with in a decade starting from a tiny investment Intel Corporation become the biggest foreign direct investor with 1 Billion USD in Vietnam in 2006. Employing talented citizens locally and indirectly bringing enormous amount of foreign direct investment which employing even more.

During Intel CEO Craig Barrett's visit to Vietnam in August 2002, he challenged the country to "awaken the sleeping dragon" by increasing technical literacy in its young population. In my opinion Vietnam beat that challenge by setting up an investment friendly atmosphere which attracts this outstanding investment of Intel Corporation. In my heart I have no doubt that Chairman Craig Barrett will through similar challenge to the Bengal tigers if he visits Bangladesh near future.

Disclaimer: This document is prepared from published data from Business Week, isuppli, http://www.intel.com/, http://www.thanhniennews.com/, and other public sources. The opinion expressed here are authors own, not Intel Corporation’s or any others.