Bubbles - smart technology solution for remote areas

Creating jobs thereby empowering youth, specially women is the fastest way for a nation to rise. Our goal is to create a pool of skilled tech workers, in places away from the big cities, thereby enabling the marginalized citizens to do work from their own cities and villages.

With 65% of population under 25, and a huge chunk of them unemployed, we will provide them with a platform to train themselves with the latest technologies and tools. The training will be on low tech out-sourced work like graphics design, web development, video editing, content editing etc.

We will use this pool of skilled resources to work on projects from around the world and in their local cities and towns. These type of work pay much more than regular labor work in Bangladesh and the best part is women will be empowered to learn the skill and work from home. 

Ready made garments sector has done excellent in creating millions of jobs for the not-so-educated as well as graduates. In a country of 163 million, of which close to 100 million are youth and half are women, focus should be on creating technology jobs. There are tens of thousands of high school graduates, with dreams and energy, but their financial conditions don't always allow them to go for college education. Our goal is to tap into this segment of the population, and specially try to reach out to the young women. We want to give them technology skills they can use to earn decent living without ever having to attend college or they can go for a college degree once they are financially able. 

Bangladesh is a Dhaka based country, with trade, commerce, government agencies all operating out of Dhaka. Our goal is to establish satellite training centers and offices in remote cities and villages in Bangladesh. This is to enable to youth who are eager to learn and work, teach a employable skill  at a minimum cost and without having to relocate. We will create employment, in local areas and relieve the congestion in Dhaka city all in one shot.

We aim to serve the marginalized population in Bangladesh, who are either unable to come to big cities for education and work or are not finding the right jobs in their own home towns. There are a good size of population, specially youth and women, trying to find work. Our goal is to show them a new technology with which they can acquire the right skills which will create employment with decent wages. Since our program is in its infancy, we have done some basic research on the need of a small town in Dinajpur, and looked at the cost and what it takes to train and employ a sample.

Bangladesh definitely needs jobs created in different directions, high-tech, medical, accounting, teachers. We believe we can use a critical mass to train for low-tech jobs with a promise of faster employment. The skill set required for jobs like Graphics Design, Web Development, Video Editing are not that intensive and does not require candidates to be graduates. This makes it an excellent opportunity for motivated high school graduates to embrace this profession.

Our solution is to empower the marginalized youth population with low tech skills so they can earn a decent living. Bangladesh, with its 163 million population needs to expand in various avenues to generate foreign exchange. One excellent way is to create skilled low-tech workers at home and use them to provide service world-wide. Our goal is to create low-tech training centers and incubators, we fondly call bubbles across the small towns and villages in Bangladesh.

Our goal is to use the resources who are high school graduates, energetic eager to work but lack professional training. Our tools are software based and we will provide training on a variety of subjects as stated below. Each one has a different pace of course work but in all training we will keep a part for communications and specially spoken English. Our focus is mainly on the following as it is proved to have demand in the market.

1. Web development

2. Photoshop editing [Professional and Advanced training]

3. Print-on-demand

4. Content editing

5. SEO - search engine optimization

Bangladesh is becoming a hub of out-sourced soft-ware as well as other low tech work. Unfortunately it is almost always in big cities like Dhaka, Chattogram, Khulna etc. For a country like Bangladesh where the majority people are living in small towns, semi-towns or villages, jobs need to be created in those marginalized areas. Garments is one industry that needs so many things for it to work that it is difficult for them to work out of small cities, towns or villages. We are proposing a solution where we will take the work where the critical masses are residing. Once the local people can work locally not only their own towns and villages develop, it will also take off immense pressure from capital Dhaka where everyone is trying to flock for jobs. 

Although working remotely is nothing new, but having big institutes move to the inner cities to train and eventually create offices to work should be beneficial to the locals. The technology we will employ is also not new, but we intend to use it to create a new brand of professionals, specially women, financially disadvantaged population, and youths.

We are calling our hubs as bubbles and our plan is to roll out these bubbles to localities that are far, out of reach, remote and with youths and adults without jobs. Bubbles will be literally like bubbles, which we can blow, move around and settle in places just right for training and employment.

The problem we see and are trying to tackle is basically two fold. Create opportunities to bring individuals and families out of poverty, create economic advantages for people willing to work hard and also make small cities of Bangladesh power players in the global tech economy. Often times youths in the rural areas do not have the opportunity to get advanced state-of-the-art training in tools which fuels today's economy. Even if they had opportunity, most of the time they will not be able to bear the cost. We are tying their opportunity to train at our centers and eventually start a job and earn a living to them becoming the next batch of trainers who will create more employable workers. So not only do we make sure they train and get a job from an inner city or village but also they will have to give back to the community by building more work force like them. 

As we are training in remote places, we are targeting women to be our main work force. Women have the advantage of not leaving their areas for work, since in Bangladesh women's safety and security is in shambles. Women will also be able to work from home at least 50% of their time, thereby providing care to family members if needed. Our goal is to bring out the hidden potential most individuals possess but never get opportunity to exercise. 

Our experimental project is in remote area of Dinajpur called Birol. In that area the number of trainers we created by the program called TTT [Train the Trainers] is 4. These 4 trainers are not only working on projects but also training new batches, to date there are 30 graduates who have successfully trained from the institute. Dinajpur is in northern Bangladesh and is a whole days commute from Dhaka. Our center is even in more remote area within Dinajpur. Given the fact the areas are so remote, training almost 3 dozen workers and employing some of them is a great achievement. 

Given proper funding our goal is to have at least 10 centers in other rural or remote areas of Bangladesh. Trainings are 2 or 3 months boot-camp style and in every batch we can get 20-25 trained. At a minimum we will be serving 1000 youths and women in the coming year.

With the centers settled, we aim to really gear up to not only reach out to 50% of all the cities and small towns of Bangladesh but also to create parallel batches and get 500 youths graduating from each of our Bubbles. Our main aim is to make sure these Bubbles are the shelter not only for them to train up but also to get the right jobs and keep working in one of these bubbles.

There are 42 cities [population more than 100,000] in Bangladesh of them 11 are considered mega cities. Our goals are simple:

One year goal - Setup 5 new centers [a bubble] in 5 of the 42 cities 

Five year goal - Setup a  bubble [new center] in all 42 cities

The barriers can be summarized as follows:

Financial - With an ambitious goal of having multiple centers in remote cities and towns require enough funds to cover the cost of initial setup and regular monthly expenses. To motivate students and specially the poor ones, we would love to be able to give 50% off. This is the money that needs to be raised or managed through other sources.

Technical - We have to use the program called TTT [Train the Trainers] to make sure we are using highly qualified trainers. A skilled trainer will help create skilled and interested students and thus they will be able to procure jobs and complete them as needed. 

Cultural/Market - As we move to inner cities, we will be viewed with skepticism. Our goal is to market the end goal to local household. We have to reach the local population and make sure their goals are aligned with what we are offering as an alternative to local industry jobs. This requires human resource and enough funds to be able to educate people about the prospect of a life style change.

Financial Barrier - With an yearly budget of almost $45,000 the first two years will be a huge financial crisis for Bubbles. We will apply for funding from Government organization if we fail to secure funds through this challenge. One other options is to also approach individual investors to help us through these evolving years. Few other approaches we will pursue is to cut down on staff costs, minimize admin/cleaner costs and also maximize use of our resources [make rental property as efficient as possible]  

Technical Barrier - We have to train the trainers which again goes back to financial barrier. This will incur some costs. The bigger issue is to be able to get them the right skills needed to conduct the courses. We are working with people from Silicon Valley who are willing to give us some training over the course of an year to develop strong trainers for our center.

Cultural/Market Barriers - Convincing our youth to work hard and take charge of your own life is a challenge in itself. A big chunk of our desired candidates are women, trying to become independent, some times to escape poverty at other times to flee from abuse. We need women field officers to approach them delicately, and show them a path to financial independence. It requires a lot of hard work and skill, we hope to partner with local NGOs to get the word out.

N/A

Full time - 4

Part time - 4

contractors - 10

Our team consists of engineers, marketing managers, experts in software. Team lead is 18 years Intel veteran from Silicon Valley with experience in other high-tech companies like Ulkasemi and GUC. Other team members are experts in Web Development software, Java, Java Script, and SEO. Our team is currently working as freelancer, securing many projects. With the world becoming truly a global community, and e-commerce is fueling the growth of online presence which in turn requires expertise like ours. Our goal is to let these opportunity translate into jobs for our youths, women and marginalized populations. 

Our team has been running this mode of operations for last 2 years and is well positioned to scale up. We are not offering anything out of the ordinary but using age old method of "teaching someone to fish" so he/she can not only earn but also contribute to society. 

We are collaborating and co-ordinating trainings with another organization as given below.

Shikhha Anirban Bangladesh
Vocational training center
Nurul Huda, Parbatipur, Dinajpur.

We work with them for support when we are in their area for training and vice versa.

Goal of Bubbles is to bring technology to an untapped section of our underprivileged population. Our mission is to set up training centers and remote work-places for people living in inner cities and villages who are either enable to go to Dhaka for work or prefer to stay in their local areas. With e-commerce and internet marketing it is pretty clear that there is a huge demand for Graphic Designers, and Web Developers. Countries all over the world are looking for cost effective ways to get their work done. They are searching for skilled work force through on-line job portals.

At Bubbles we are training anyone who wants to get trained and land a job pretty quickly. The requirements are High School graduates and a little bit of spoken and written Engilish. Our targets are unemployed, but highly motivated youths, energetic stay-at-home moms, widows, divorcees who are trying to find a path forward in their lives. We will provide them with everything needed to get trained on one of the lucrative market needs. We have our own expert trainers to provide the training and help them navigate and look for out-sourced work. We will give them hands-on training and also provide some basic English speaking skills. All for a minimum cost so they can work from their own local areas. 

Bubbles model advantage is multi-fold. By keeping talents in localized areas we help the area grow, and at the same time give respite to Dhaka city.

As with every start-up the first few years are the hardest part of bringing together the business, the people and the resources. 

Our model is two-fold:

The training center - We have estimated an initial one time cost of $18,000 and a monthly expense of $2,000 for rents and trainers.

Training cost per student is Tk.10,000 which is 50% discounted now

Job center - One time expense of $20,000 and a monthly cost of $3,000

We expect to create a revenue stream that will cover our training center cost by the end of the 2nd year of operation.

Since it takes some amount of time to get projects through open market place, we are projecting at least an year before we can generate enough revenues to cover our costs in the Job center.

Bubbles is pretty ambitious as it aims to reach all small cities and towns in Bangladesh in a matter of 5 years. There are 42 cities in Bangladesh of which 11 are considered major cities. There are 490 towns, with population less than 100,000 thus these do not fall in the cities category. Bubbles will try to create one bubble in each of the 42 cities in the coming years and thus a massive amount of resources is needed. With one center running pretty well we are confident of our success but we definitely need funding and connections and collaborations with other low-tech companies. 

If our solution is selected we expect to get advisory help along with initial funding to expand in new cities. Bubbles is an organization that is a must have in Bangladesh as it will strive to collaborate with similar organizations and government entities and create all possibilities for our youth.

It will be great to partner with organizations who are actively working in technology and helping to place candidates overseas. One such company will be BJIT. Also we will like to collaborate with government agencies in charge of technology.