Finding Light in Data and Analytics

Bijon Islam is the cofounder and CEO of LightCastle Partners, an organization that focuses on creating data-driven opportunities for growth and impact for development partners, corporates, SMEs and Startups. Previously he worked with Citibank, N.A. and Citi Foundation.

Bijon Islam
Cofounder and CEO of LightCastle Partners

Academic Background and Corporate Career

Graduating with a bachelor’s degree from IBA, University of Dhaka, Mr. Bijon Islam joined Citibank, N.A. as a Management Associate – Citi’s leadership development program. As a MA he got exposure in Treasury, Corporate and Investment Bank, Finance and Transaction Services before being placed in the Business Planning and Analysis Unit where he became the country lead after his supervisor left.
In Citi he worked in a variety of episodic deals including Bangladesh’s first Interest Rate Swap, Equity Convertible Bonds, Largest IPO, Microfinance Securitization and Block Equity Trades. After graduating from the MA program, his chief responsibility revolved around leading the strategy planning and analysis unit. Working with regional teams across Singapore, Hong Kong and India, he played a major role in aligning Bangladesh as an important piece in Citi’s growth strategy in Asia. Due to outstanding performance, he received the CEO Excellence Awards for two years in a row. During his time at Citi, he also completed Executive MBA from IBA, DU as well in Finance.

Motivation behind establishing LightCastle Partners

Over the last decade the world has grown through an interesting phase and more so because young business or more glamorously known as Startups have become billion dollar entities leaving behind century old organizations. The trend was apparent in emerging economies as well with Startups utilizing technology leapfrog to growth hack. Even in neighboring India, businesses like Flipkart were moving into the billion dollar club within a few years.

At the same time, Mr. Bijon was dealing with businesses on a daily basis in his work and tried to understand their revenue model. In the process he personally also got interested in playing the sport himself.
In 2013 he decided to explore opportunities outside the conventional domain and reached out to his B-School batch mates Zahed (then working at HSBC), Ivdad (ex-StanC, BYLC, who was a leaving for his MBA at US) and Saif (he had worked in Asset Management before working in an ICT company). They figured out an intersection between their passions, expertise and market need, and cofounded LightCastle Partners to bring “Business Data and Analytics at your Fingertips”. Absence of quality data for Bangladesh coupled with the fact that India was going through an Analytics wave were important parameters when they selected the business model.
The demand for Data and Analytics were increasing – with second generation businesses the new management were more open to data-driven decision making. They started by providing market data mainly to MNCs before diversifying to local business conglomerates. They invested in data collection platforms including setting up a real-time consumer research platform, LightCastle Data (later on building offline data-collection capabilities as well). They now use hybrid methods and aided interviews for data capture and their geo-location apps and technology give them better control over quality. Moving forward they diversified into advisory services and developing business models and solutions based on data. Currently they define themselves as an organization that “Creates data-driven opportunities for growth and lasting impact for Corporates, Development Partners, Startups and SMEs”. Over the last six years they have worked with 100+ clients in 150+ engagements and expanded to a 30+ member team.

From Job to Venture: the Trade-offs

Risk-Return Trade-off: Before Mr. Bijon left his job in the investment bank, one of his seniors had stated his pessimistic opinion about the switch from job to entrepreneurship in terms of risk-adjusted financial returns. Added to that was the statistic of 90% of companies dying out before reaching the 5th year. The latter has been countered as LightCastle Partners are in the 6th year now. However, no one knows if one can make it unless he or she tries, so the situation is kind of like Schrödinger’s cat.

Absence of Support: To him, this neither means infrastructure – incubators or access to finance – nor favorable government policies or support from the market, businesses or society. The most important support comes from ones’ family and friends. Support from his mom and dad pulled him through when he left his job. His close friends did not tell him that he was wasting his life – they joined him as business partners instead. This is what is needed to push someone and explore. His mom also hypnotized that he would never get married once he left a job however, his wife Sabrina was kind (foolish, according to him!) enough to marry an entrepreneur and support him. It may seem ironic given she is top in everything she does.

Short term loss and long term gains: There is a short term opportunity cost in terms of monthly cash inflow (since there is no salary) or a career path. This period is stressful as one needs to figure everything out in meeting daily needs, and it becomes more difficult to digest when ones’ peers are seen going up the corporate ladder, getting posted worldwide and taking exotic vacations. However, if one is successful and perseveres, the long terms gains are there. This brings up exactly the point, one needs to have bet on ones’ future and have a long-term view, not even medium term, and that is something difficult to have when facing the heat of running a business.

Self-preparation before taking up this venture

The partners wanted to build something that they were passionate about, had a market demand and they had collective expertise in. All three of them had background in working with lot of data and knew the pains of absence of data in daily work. Personally for Mr. Bijon, his tenure at Citi helped him set the foundation. Rotating in different departments, he got a solid understanding of how an organization works plus also got to see various industries that Citi’s clients operated in. After his placement in Business Planning unit he got exposed to huge volumes of data and understanding how those could unlock tremendous value for organizations. Additionally, there were always multiple projects going on and he learned project management and execution from team members. Lastly, his volunteer works and ECAs during his university days also helped him get a jumpstart.

Vision behind the venture

The tagline when they started was “inspiring business, boosting economy”. Six years later they are still working with the vision of Boosting Economy, Inspiring Businesses and Changing Lives. They believe Bangladesh and other emerging economies will unlock great values by engaging in private sector development. To do that they have the mission of “Creating data-driven opportunities for growth and impact”. To execute that mission, they work with development partners like ADB, IFC, Gates Foundation, USAID, UKAID, Syngenta Foundation and top tier local/international corporates to develop market studies, strategy papers, consulting and investment advisory support. For SMEs and Startups they run accelerator programs all around the country as well as support them in capital raises. Lastly, they are investing in data capture and analytics technologies so that they and their clients always have access to valuable market insights and quick fire analytics.

Excitement after launching LightCastle

The name LightCastle was not there at the beginning. Interestingly the company’s first name was “Leapfrog” – idea was that they would help the economy escape development cycles and grow at higher rates. They first launched this out of their bedrooms and decided they were going to have a website first and think about offices afterwards. There was a big photoshoot session at Mr. Bijon’s house – his dad took all the pictures, the dining table was camouflaged to look like board room table and they launched the website – which then had the four of them and their advisors. High level advisors including their professors at IBA, MDs of banks and serial entrepreneurs like Mr. Affan Mahmud kindly lent them their names so that the website looked professional. Now when he looks back, he misses those early days and wonders how clueless they were back then about running a business – not having a concrete product idea or any customers or even any marketing strategy but happily building websites and social media pages.
Long way from there to where they are now but Mr. Bijon will forever remember the fun they had, late night stayovers to chalk out business ideas (apparently which mostly consisted of a lot of eating rather than anything else), getting their first client, writing proposals, raising their seed capital (thanks goes to Mr. Samad Miraly from Olympic Industries, Mr. Fayaz Taher from Fortuna Group and Mr. Mustafizur R Khan from Startup Dhaka coming in as investor directors and believing in them), getting their first office, moving to a bigger office and growing together as a team.

Stumbling blocks after initiation

When one goes to run a business for the first time, problems are faced left and right. As first time business entrepreneurs they faced problems figuring out from how to market to clients to how to set-up lunch system in offices. However, one of the biggest problems they faced was not getting paid by clients in time or not being paid at all. During their first year of operations they lost more than BDT 6 million in accounts receivables. Those were big groups or companies and till date there is very little they can do. Even large multinationals and big global consulting firms who are their clients pay them often 6 to 12 months late. Such delays in payments hurt the growth of the business as they have to finance their working capital from retained earnings or own capital. Over time they reworked their client strategy and targeted clients who have better payment records but for a young company taking such a huge write-off in the first year was a big set-back.

To those feel like quitting mid-way through their own startup

It is really tough at times. The commitment one needs to put through, the number of hours, short term sacrifices in cash/liquidity, discount on life-style, mismatch in lifestyle with ones’ peers, client dropouts, work deadlines that has become irrelevant – it cannot be said that things are easy. However, three things that have always put Mr. Bijon through – the support from his family – his dear wife, his Mom, Dad, his kid brother; support from his business partners (Ivdad and Zahed who put in excessive long hours) and his awesome team and positive encouragement from their clients.

Contribution of LightCastle in its sector

LightCastle is here to take Bangladesh and other emerging economies forward by creating “data-driven opportunities for growth and impact”. For corporates they are doing market research, business strategy consulting, investment advisory to expand business, raising capital and giving them un-biased authentic market intelligence. With their development partners they are helping them assess impact opportunities, build sustainable business models, private sector engagement and driving Sustainable Development Goals. For SMEs and Startups, they are running accelerator programs, supporting incubations, building capacity and helping to raise investment capital. Lastly, for the government they helped build the country’s first open data portal and now they have opened the country’s first one stop source for business data at www.databd.co. At the end they continue to work hard every day to play a role in the growth story of Bangladesh and emerging economies.

Take on the trend of “mid-level managers quitting corporate job to establish their venture” in Bangladesh

Mr. Bijon suggests to take the leap of faith. It is not easy but can be very rewarding. Compared to a few years back there are examples of many companies which have corporate managers leaving their jobs to establish their own firms. Also, that training that one has received in an organization would come in extremely handy as one establishes ones’ own company and try to scale. The Bangladesh Play is an exciting opportunity now – with the country’s growth, tech adaptable large demographic bulge (50% below 35), density dividend, many problems to solve, middle class growing at double digits rates, favorable geography – India on one side and China on the other, globalization – the scopes are endless. So take the leap or support the ones who do – either way Bangladesh grows towards an advanced economy. That is what everything is about!