An initiative that enables the reach of ecommerce to villages, breaking the bracket of city bound services, backed by increasing penetration of internet connectivity.
The corporate mind of Shahriar Hasan was curious to expand the wings of ecommerce beyond the lines and he co-founded Paperfly with couple of soul mates as one of the first homegrown logistic-tech venture in Bangladesh.
“We want to cater the supply chain management of ecommerce services with help of modern technology and digital tools. From order placement to shipment, there was a gap in Bangladesh ecommerce industry, even couple of years ago, and we founded the venture to mitigate the challenges with local workforces,” Shahriar Hasan, founder and CEO of Paperfly, said during an exclusive interview with The Bangladesh Brand Forum.
Paperfly has a strong focus on building an automated, tech enabled end to end logistics infrastructure that has the true ability to serve its clients with reasonable cost and fastest possible delivery. With a frontier mind like Shahriar, it promises to go a very long way in the path of accomplishment and success.
The story not confines in social media posting only but surfaced over thousands of unions since starting journey in 2016. And Bangladesh got some new experiences in practice of digital business deploying workforce up to village.
Shahriar, having a somewhat introvert nature, envisioned to empower the rural economy through leveraging the potential of ecommerce.
“Once, not very long ago, an entrepreneur felt it almost impossible to run an ecommerce startup with the high-tension of delivering the orders to last mile customers. Now, from women to young minds, all can start something new with just a website or a social media page (especially on Facebook), knowing that nationwide fast and affordable last mile services are there. Hundreds of women are operating ecommerce from distant villages, thanks to Paperfly’s doorstep pick-up services – and that’s an amazing experience for a founder of a tech-enabled logistic venture,” he said.
The tech entrepreneur has illustrious academic trainings and grooming, creating a strong base for his progressive and successful career.
After completing his education from renowned institutions like Saint Joseph High School and Notre Dame College in Dhaka, he received bachelor of business administration in Marketing and Management Information System from North South University.
He worked for reputed multinational organisations like British American Tobacco, Qubee, Airtel, Robi Axiata and Banglalink before he started his logistics venture, Paperfly. It is worth mentioning that he served as vice president at Robi Axiata and the Head of Acquisition and Postpaid department in Banglalink.
Despite having a secured and successful career in his job, Shahriar always wished to do something on his own that would be revolutionary and novel in concept. That drive led him to jointly work with his three close friends Rahath Ahmed, Shamsuddin Ahmed and Razibul Islam to develop a tech based, modern logistics venture, Paperfly.
E-commerce has emerged as a new window of opportunity for Bangladeshi businesses in last two years as the global pandemic has triggered a boom in e-commerce in the country and around the world.
“The growing trend of ecommerce opened new windows for the tech-bound logistic venture that continued service to deliver products to customers’ door steps amid pandemic situation. There are countless occasions, when we run offices during holidays or other incidents to meet market demand,” Shahriar added.
The Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industries (DCCI) estimated around 166 per cent growth in e-commerce business in 2020 and the market E-commerce thrives during corona size is expected to reach $3 billion by 2023.
“We have a dream to take a local ecommerce company to global arena where it can be called our very own Amazon. For making this happen, the policy for cross border ecommerce is crucial to take the products from local to global,” Shahriar added.
Ecommerce Association of Bangladesh (E-Cab) data shows that there are around 1600 registered companies under the umbrella of the trade body while the market size is around Tk 160 billion. Commerce Ministry and E-Cab are jointly working on the policy formulation to support digital businesses in cross-border transactions
The founder believes that Bangladeshi youths have potential to develop world-class ecommerce ventures with proper nursing and mentoring in growth stage.
“When I talk to the youths, many of them point out their struggle for accessing seed funding at early stage of running a startup. With a certain level of readiness, any startup can actually reach out to different funds, but that development process and ecosystem are yet to mature in our country. Such a process, when developed and in practice, can bring different prototypes to a funnel to accelerate them until developing a minimum valuable product. As a founder of a tech-enabled start-up, I see various areas where I can support for new flock in ecommerce,” said Shahriar, an ever-smiling person, as part of materialising his dreams and aspirations.
Passionate by nature, Shahriar is a mastermind in achieving his goals. In his whole career, he has lifted himself up on many occasions. Whatever this very hardworking and persevering person does, he does it from his heart. That is why it leaves a great impact every time.
Shahriar said the ecommerce industry cannot move forward without smart logistics that takes over the entire responsibility of picking up the product, performing quality check, warehousing, real-time fulfillment, delivering the goods to customers and collecting the proceeds.
The dream logistic venture made him leave the corporate sector and start this pioneer company dedicated to provide modern day logistics service to every nook and cranny of the country.
Shahriar’s tremendous hard work finally paid off as Paperfly is now a verified leader in technology based door to door delivery service in Bangladesh, in both B2C and B2B sectors.
Since the commencement of its journey in 2016, Paperfly never suffered from indecisiveness or any confusion about its goals, as it had the finest of characters leading from the front. It is now not only the pioneer in tech-based doorstep delivery in Bangladesh, it also has the strongest and the most widespread network all over the country.
Starting from a small set-up providing service in Dhaka city only, now Paperfly has extended itself where it serves in 4400 unions in 64 districts. There are seven crore potential internet users in our country. So there is a huge possibility in this ever growing sector.
Shariar Hasan saw this true potential and gave his heart and soul along with fellow teammates in all these years to develop a high-speed, high-quality and high-tech logistics system with super after-sales service.
“At present time, it can be said that Paperfly is one of the key players bringing revolutionary change in technological advancements in the country. The materialization of Digital Bangladesh is being greatly facilitated by this, no doubt,” he said.
Literally fastest delivery time, perfect packaging, collection from and delivery to the doorsteps of the clients, secure and effective financial transactions, cash on delivery system, easy exchange or return policy- all these aspects have made Paperfly stand out and become the best in the field it provides service.
Another great step Shahriar Hasan has taken here is, Paperfly operates its activities through its own proprietary software system, ‘Wings’, that acts as the single point interface for its entire operation.
The tech-enabled venture provides a variety of ecommerce services such as pick-up, fulfillment, warehousing, nationwide home delivery, and cash on delivery, return, exchange, refund management and doorstep marketing activation.
Under leadership of Shahiar, the tech-logistic company secured a total of Tk 2.02 billion from Ecom Express, one of the leading tech-based e-commerce logistics solutions providers in India with latest round in April this year. This is a nod of acknowledgement to the sincere efforts and revolutionary ideas of the founders.
There is a scheduled election of E-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (E-Cab) in third week of June. Young minds like Shahriar should be brought to up front to lead the ecommerce industry to next level with prudent policy advocacy.
