Facebook can be effective tool for branding
Social media platforms, especially Facebook, can play a significant role in developing of building businesses in Bangladesh if entrepreneurs can use them properly, experts and successful e-commerce firms said yesterday.
There are eight lakh Facebook pages in Bangladesh that run business contents. Even if one lakh pages run their business regularly or even occasionally, their value would be huge, they said.
“Here, idea is the key and no cost is needed to brand products,” said Mahtab Uddin Ahmed, managing director of Robi, at the inaugural session of the F-Commerce Summit at the Krishibid Institution Bangladesh in Dhaka.
The event, which was the third of its kind, was organised by Greeky Social, a digital media marketing company.
Speakers at the event said social media platforms give chances to young entrepreneurs to get their fair share of the market.
Currently, there is a huge number of social media channels and entrepreneurs need to be careful while carrying out digital campaigns and need to have clear idea about prospective customers, Ahmed said.
“Choose your social platform correctly and in line with the target audience of the products.”
Dhaka has the second highest number of Facebook users among the cities in the world, according to Ahmed. There are about 3.5 crore active users in Bangladesh as well.
“One can easily brand their products through the huge platform,” he added.
It is a huge opportunity to have social media like Facebook to open a new business, said Ashish Chakraborty, director and chief commercial officer of SSL Wireless, an online payment gateway platform. “That’s why the number of Facebook-based pages is so high.”
He urged f-commerce entrepreneurs to improve service quality.
F-commerce is the term used in the online business world to focus on designing and developing content and storefront sites on Facebook social networking websites. In short, selling products and services on Facebook.com involves all types of e-commerce on social media.
“From the e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB), we usually receive huge number of complaints about f-commerce, and this number needs to go down,” said Chakraborty, also a director of the e-CAB.
Managing trade licence and bank financing is the biggest challenge facing f-commerce and the e-CAB is trying to sort them out, he said.
Proper documentation is the main challenge to get a loan, said Shajed Al Haque, head of trade business at Brac Bank, in another session.
However, the private bank is giving out loans to e-commerce companies. “In order to receive financing, entrepreneurs need to maintain accounting from day one.”
“And if anyone can maintain it for a few years, it will be an asset for the venture and banks can depend on the transaction record.”
The bank is very open to disbursing loans and urged Facebook entrepreneurs to use at least freely available accounting software to secure loans, he said.
Brac Bank has two lakh SME customers and disbursed Tk 12,000 crore among them.
In order to support digital entrepreneurs, Brac Bank is offering end-to-end solutions in partnership with a loan evaluation company and a delivery company for the betterment of e-commerce companies, Haque said. The Daily Star was the media partner of the event.
