Tradeshi-New Horizons team up to reduce unemployment in Bangladesh

Tradeshi Pty Ltd, Alibaba Channel Partner in Bangladesh, has teamed up with the Bangladesh wing of New Horizons CLC to strengthen the employability of ICT jobseekers.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the two parties in this regard at the Dhanmondi office of New Horizons CLC Bangladesh this morning.

As per the agreement, the “strategic partnership” will work across the following areas: (1) Mentoring, Prepping & Placement of candidates with technical certification in employment at local and international companies, (2) Development of “Digital Export Marketing” and “Digital B2B Marketing” curriculum, and (3) Collaboration on developing new techniques to place technically certified job seekers in positions with promising companies (eg. hiring events, hackathons, incubators, accelerators, etc.)

Shadab Parvez, the founder and also the managing director of  Tradeshi Pty Ltd., said: “As a nation, we must prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Industrial automation and disproportionate labour wage-to-productivity increase are already seeing a growing number of manufacturing companies lay off workers.”

“There will be a time when tens of thousands of ex-garments workers will be destitute if we don’t act quickly to develop strong technical capability in digitisation of this industry and beyond,” he added.

According to the company, ICT outsourcing has been a growth industry, where Bangladesh’s government leadership wants to hit USD 5 billion in ICT exports by 2021.  Whilst outsourcing companies and freelancers are predominantly expected to drive the boom, there are significant gaps in finding Bangladeshi candidates with effective ‘soft skills’ (eg. communication, emotional intelligence, conflict management, teamwork etc.) combined with relevant technical certifications to secure consistent income stream, successfully build innovation capacity within organizations and create innovative companies themselves.

Rajib Hossain, the chairman of Tradeshi Pvt Ltd., meanwhile is determined to bring changes in this area.

He said: “We have been working with hundreds of export-oriented local and international firms for the last three and a half years. More than 80% of these firms have indicated soft skills being an important factor starting from when they are dealing with own customers face-to-face, to finding solutions for production issues.”

“By leveraging Tradeshi’s large pool of B2B client-base, New Horizons graduates will be prepped for placement at firms across the country and also at various international firms,” he added.

Shadab  further said: “Tradeshi is organically developing an executive search and recruitment functionality, where companies of all sizes will soon be able to offload their recruitment processes to us.

“We envision our work will help reduce the unemployment rate of tertiary-educated jobseekers, which is disproportionately higher than the national average at over 13%, and we believe New Horizons CLC of Bangladesh is the only partner that will help us achieve this objective.”