American Center Dhaka organized a virtual session recently on the impact of COVID-19 on entrepreneurs. Cultural Affairs Officer of U.S. Embassy Dhaka Joshua Kamp gave welcome remarks. Salma Adil, Group CFO and Executive Director Top of Mind Group and Namira Hossain of Cookups Technologies shared their thoughts and industry insights of brand marketing communication and food-tech industry. Misha Mehjabeen, Founder of Healthy Bengal moderated the session.
To celebrate the Global Entrepreneurship Week, The American Center Dhaka has been organizing a series of virtual programs highlighting the experience sharing sessions, industry insights and how to start and transform startups during the pandemic. During the session titled ‘Impact of COVID-19 on Entrepreneurship’, panelist Salma Adil, Group CFO and Executive Director of Top of Mind has presented an insightful overview of global brand marketing communication industry during pandemic and impact of COVID-19 on local industry as well.
While speaking about her own organization, being a finance expert, she emphasized on well-being of the people and maintaining contingency plan for keeping the operations lively even during crisis like pandemic. She says, “We have been in this business for 12 years, it is our people who contributed in our growth and sustainability. Even though we have sustained major impact as our client suffered during lockdown, we feel committed to keep our family intact and invest in capacity enhancement of our people to cope up with the new normal demand of the industry demand.”
Namira Hossain, CEO of Cookups Technologies emphasized on agility and adaptation to be the key to success during crisis like COVID-19 pandemic. She says, “Even though we lost our large-scale order for events and parties, there has been rising demand for enhanced basket size order from the individuals who would order comfortable food for a week. Also, our customer would avoid cash transaction while receiving the deliveries. As a result, we had to bring innovations in our products and introduce cashless payment system.”
The session ended with a Q&A session where both the panelists answered to the queries of the participants and shared their tips and suggestions to young entrepreneurs.
