Rise of Social Entrepreneurs in Bangladesh’s development scene is inevitable.

For too long, charitable organisations and development professionals have been controlling the narrative for social development in Bangladesh.

It’s about to change very drastically. Those who will embrace social entrepreneurship, develop sustainable business models will prosper and prevail.

I was invited as a panelist, representing Social Entrepreneur in the 10th Annual SRHR knowledge fair 2025 by Share-net Bangladesh.

The panel topic was “Where knowledge meets business: Sustainable Social Enterprise for Economic Empowerment”.

In a room full of development professionals, govt delegates, I said, “It’s not that we don’t know what we need to do, yet we are not doing. The only thing that lacks is the Entrepreneur DNA. Without that, you can’t solve the social problem by building a business.”

And you have to do 4 things very well:
1. Root cause analysis – find out why the problem happens.
2. Understand money & ROI
3. Understand the right business model – even if poor can’t pay, how can you develop model without relying on charity.
4. Customer psychology – what to communicate, how to communicate to drive behavior change and action.

That’s it.
No rocket science.
Yet very few organisations can do it.
The rest lacks the ‘Entrepreneur DNA’.