Bangladesh's Corporate World

South of the Cox’s Bazaar-Teknaf peninsula lies a small island, known as Saint Martin’s Island since the British occupation. The first settlements were however of Arabian sailors 250 years ago, who gave it the name - Zajira . To locals, it is known as Narikel Gingira (Coconut Island). St. Martin’s Island is the only coral island in Bangladesh. It exhibits unspoilt natural beauty and lucrative beaches dotted with coral reefs. The island has approximately 7000 residents, living mostly from fishing and other staple crops like coconut and rice. Their main export is algae which is dried and sent to Myanmar. Chicken and other products are imported from mainland Bangladesh. They live in a certain scope of risk, as during the rainy season, they are trapped on the island due to the dangerous Bay of Bengal. There are no resident doctors in the remote areas. However, the rest of the year, the island is a serene and sunny place. The only transport to the island is by boat from the mainlan...

Are the mobile operators of Bangladesh spending too much on their marketing campaigns? Frequent campaigns by the mobile operators are in many cases not inter-related and in some cases lack creativity. Some TV commercials in fact have nothing to do with a service of a company; it seems ads are created and shown just to be in the mind of existing users. Are the mobile operators and their advertising agencies spending it right? Or they are just spending it for the sake of carrying out marketing campaigns? A business school instructor of North South University, who worked for a leading advertising agency in the past, Galib Mohiuddin, had this on his Facebook wall last week: The telco campaigns in Bangladesh only tell me that they now have too much marketing budget to allow such creative to pass. I guess an FMCG would be much more cautious in spending every penny even with rocketing revenues. Telcos in Bangladesh used to do the same a couple of years back when they had less market...