Impact of resilience on startup business in Bangladesh

Impact of resilience on startup business in Bangladesh

In 2016, “BEAT” music pad started their journey in Rajshahi. It was owned by Mashnur Rahman, a 2nd year BBA student of United International University. Besides that, he was a bass guitarist of a band called “SURTUR”. He is originally from Rajshahi. He was into music from his childhood days and even now he is passionate about it. His father is a successful businessman in Rajshahi and is founder of one of the biggest restaurant chains in Rajshahi. Between 2013 and 2018, Mashnur was an integral part of several bands in Rajshahi and Dhaka. In 2017, he along with his band members released an album from a Record Company based in Germany which got positive feedback form the audience. Currently, he is working on his own composition.

Back in 2016, he along with his younger brother started a music practice pad in Rajshahi which was soundproof. This was the kind of place where musicians can play music and practice without any sort of interruption. He started this pad because he is a fan of metal song and there is no such practice pad for practicing such kind of music in Rajshahi. Another reason for starting this business was to earn some extra money for his own. He felt the need and started the business without having any second thought.

Initially, he invested 80 thousand taka by himself and took some loan from his friends and family. He rented a room in Rajshahi and set it up for the pad. For 3 or 4 months it was going pretty well but afterwards he started to loose customer. In 2017, he shut it down.

In my opinion, there are several reasons why he could not succeed in that business. Firstly, the lack of proper marketing. He did not spend any money for the marketing of the business. This was his biggest mistake. Whether the business is small or big it needs the attention of the customer. Without marketing it is quite impossible to grab customer’s attention.

Secondly, lack of manpower in the pad. Every business needs a team. Without proper manpower it is hard maintain the business. Mr. Mashnur had no one in particular to look after the pad in Rajshahi. One of his crucial mistakes was being a one man team, which is one of the biggest “no nos” on the entrepreneur checklist.  Although he had the courage, he was just a young man with a dream, without any experience, guidance or even a business plan, which made getting contacts, talking to and managing so many people extremely difficult. Not knowing how to make a proper plan made his work quite disoriented, he basically had to figure it out as he went along. Though, he hired 2 people to look after the place but they were not sincere about their job. As a result, he started to receive complains about the place. But he could not take proper steps because he was in Dhaka in that time.

Thirdly, the charge was a bit high in the context of Rajshahi. They were not quite ready to spend 500 taka per hours. Mr. Mashnur did not do any survey before starting the business which was another great mistake. If he did the survey before starting the business he could have gotten some idea about how much he should charge per hour and help him understand the needs of his customer.

Not to mention, the lack of proper planning was clearly visible in the business. Mr. Mashnur did not do any planning before starting the business. Every business needs a proper planning which leads to execution phase. But planning is must. Looking back now, he wonders why he didn’t take things a bit slower and how he had thought about proceeding without a written plan; but back then he was just a student who did not have a lot of time to spare so those minute details ended up being neglected.

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