Bangladesh can benefit from skills dearth in global IT sector

The global IT sector has a shortage of skilled people and Bangladesh can leave a mark by creating quality human resources, said a top official of US-based Field Nation, a leading online work marketplace.

Field Nation is one of the fastest growing companies in the US, and the man behind the firm is a non-resident Bangladeshi -- Mynul Khan.

Field Nation started its operations in 2008 with a unique proposition for freelancers to get on-site work from service providers through a cloud-based marketplace.

“From Field Nation, we processed millions of work orders this year, and we can do the same in Bangladesh. But to do that, we need quality human resources and unfortunately we can't get that kind of an asset here,” said Khan, president and CEO of the company, in an interview with The Daily Star recently.

Khan came to Dhaka at the end of August and met with several government officials, including the ICT state minister, and suggested giving importance to creating quality resources.

Field Nation maintained 50 percent year-on-year growth to become a $130-million company in just eight years.

In 2013, its revenue was $43 million, which reached $70 million in 2014 and $100 million in 2015.

Khan said Bangladesh has huge potential in the IT and software industry.

“The digital landscape is changing fast and I believe there are lots of Bangladeshi talents here who will be able to contribute to it,” he added.

Pleased by the vision of a Digital Bangladesh, he said the government is moving in the right direction. “In this sector, we are lagging behind other countries like India and the Philippines, but we can reduce the gap.”

Khan and his team also visited the Kaliakoir hi-tech park in Gazipur; he also learned that the government is establishing several hi-tech parks across the country that can bring in foreign investment.

Field Nation was ranked the 43rd fastest growing company in the USA by Inc Magazine in 2013 and received the Tekne Award 2015 for IT services awarded by the Minnesota High Tech Association.

At the beginning of its operations, Field Nation set up its office in Dhaka and currently about 100 highly skilled software engineers are working with the company in Bangladesh, he said.

“We have some plans for Bangladesh and we will conduct a feasibility study within a couple of years.”

The number of employees of the company is increasing gradually. “Manpower needs to be that much skilled.”

With plans to hire thousands in Dhaka for software-related work, he said, “Currently our software engineers and support centres are in Dhaka and we want to grow further.”

In the US, another 100 people are also working through their support centre in Bangladesh.

Field Nation has expanded its market beyond the USA to Canada, Mexico, and 12 countries across Europe. They are now working with companies like HP, AT&T, British Telecom and some other large enterprises.

Khan, who moved to the US from Bangladesh when he was 18, earned a degree in computer science from St Cloud State University in 2004. After five years with the St Cloud-based analytics firm eBureau, he formed Field Nation.

Before moving to the US, he studied at Dhaka College and passed his higher secondary level exams in 1998. His father Md Nurul Huda is a former managing director of BASIC Bank of Bangladesh.

Field Nation began its journey in 2008 when the US economy was going through the worst possible time in the country's history.

“Many people lost their jobs and the big companies started hiring people on a need basis rather than having full time employees,” Khan added.

“So the timing was perfect because people were up for any job they got,” he said.

“For example, if a big company like IBM needs to install point of sales in 2,000 Walmart stores across the USA, they are not going to send their tech people to each of those sites. Through our website, IBM can find tech people in each of those locations who will do the job. And our website handles the entire process from posting a work order to insurance coverage until the payment,” said Khan.

Field Nation is also hiring people for supporting companies like HP, Microsoft, British Telecom and other reputed companies that need highly skilled engineers.

The company has 100,000 résumés on file from different cities and says it can find a compatible match for a business client in minutes. For each completed job by one of its freelancers, Field Nation gets commission of 8 to 10 percent.

The company matches contract IT and telecom employees with businesses on a project-by-project basis.

Describing the difference between a job site and an online on-demand marketplace, he said Field Nation's sophisticated software also support work orders, taxation and even an employee can rate the freelancers. “So these ratings can also ensure trust and reliability of the freelancers' work.”

Under this work model, an expert workforce can earn more than their full-time job and companies also prefer freelancers to reduce their costs, Khan added.

Field Nation is actually connecting the local freelancers for local jobs. As telecom infrastructure is improving in Bangladesh and operators are also concentrating on third party solutions, the company sees rising opportunities.