Meet the women driving Bangladesh’s startup revolution

For decades, Bangladesh's startup ecosystem was largely defined by male-led ventures. Female entrepreneurs, though not absent, were rarely in the spotlight, often facing an uphill battle just to be heard, let alone funded. 

But the narrative has been shifting in recent years, and at the forefront of this transformation are women like Sadia Haque, Sylvana Quader Sinha, and Tasfia Tasbin — three outstanding achievers who have not only built powerful businesses but redefined what leadership looks like in Bangladesh.

Their industries could not be more different: travel tech, healthcare and AI-powered marketing automation, but their missions are deeply aligned — to build meaningful ventures from scratch, to challenge gender assumptions, and to make space for others to follow.

The Business Standard takes a closer look at their journeys, and how they battled and broke barriers to get where they are today.

Sadia Haque

The travel and aviation industry in Bangladesh has long been a male-dominated, traditional space where innovation was slow, and women's presence, particularly in leadership, was nearly non-existent. 

But that landscape began to shift when Sadia Haque stepped in over a decade ago with a vision that was anything but conventional.

"When I first entered this industry, it was driven by a mostly traditional mode of operations with no technology-based solution and an outdated playbook," Sadia recalls. 

"I wanted to build something that matches global standards, something with purpose, longevity, and impact."

That vision became ShareTrip, now a household name in Bangladesh's online travel space. But the journey was not easy. "In the early days, I had to be louder just to be heard," she said. 

"There was deep scepticism among the stakeholders, the airline execs, or hotel owners. They were used to hearing pitches from men. They weren't expecting a woman, and they certainly weren't looking forward to one."

But times have changed, and so have perceptions. 

"Now, I feel proud and privileged when they wait to hear from me. It's taken years, but that change has happened," she says, firmly but humbly.

"Building a business from the ground up is demanding for anyone, but for women, it often comes with an added layer of responsibility, as we're still expected to manage the household too," said Sadia, a mother of two daughters.

Sadia Haque. Sketch: TBS

Sadia's journey began in 2014, when she and her husband launched a small, offline travel agency. It was a small-scale business at first, serving friends and family and close associates. During that time, they started bootstrapping to build the technology that would later become ShareTrip through different integrations. It was not much at that time to launch a full-fledged tech based service platform, but the vision was there from the start. 

But the positive traction and the vision to digitise the travel industry eventually led to something bigger. After four years of steady growth, learning and back-end technology development, they secured their first round of foreign investment in 2018 with Sadia and her husband Kashef Rahman as founders of ShareTrip.

But a tech-driven travel platform was a new concept in Bangladesh, and ShareTrip needed more than funding; it needed deep structural reform in how the industry operated. Sadia was ready. With a work background with corporate giants like Grameenphone, Banglalink, BBC, and Nokia, she brought sharp insights into strategy, branding and operations.

"My previous roles helped me design ShareTrip's structure. I could mirror some of those experiences and apply them here," she said. "But leading a business is different. In corporate settings, especially in multinationals, you can be reserved and still thrive. In entrepreneurship, you have to speak up, you have to own the room."

Despite the challenges, Sadia remains optimistic about the future for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, but not without a caveat.

"There's definitely more visibility and support today, but we can't stop at celebration. We need more execution and fewer hashtags," she says. "The barriers are still there, we just have to work smarter and push harder to remove them."

Sylvana Quader Sinha

When Sylvana Quader Sinha founded Praava Health in 2014, there was no blueprint to follow: no notable healthcare tech company in Bangladesh, no peers in her field and certainly no playbook for building a one-stop outpatient healthcare system from scratch.

A lawyer and global policy specialist by training, Sylvana returned to Bangladesh with a bold vision: to democratise access to world-class, patient-centred care in a country where quality healthcare remained out of reach for many. 

Over the next decade, she led Praava as its CEO, transforming it into Bangladesh's fastest-growing healthcare brand, now serving nearly one million patients nationwide.

Praava is widely credited with bringing a series of "firsts" to the country's medical landscape, fusing international best practices with local insight and building a model that is as scalable as it is sustainable.

Sylvana believes that having like-minded peers and mentors play a strong role in starting any business, but she did not have that network locally in Bangladesh.

"When I just started, I remember reading lots of books for guidance and wisdom. But, I didn't really find any books that were written by women founders at that time, more than a decade ago. And a lot of things that male founders would say about the way they thought about problem-solving or their confidence levels were things I couldn't really relate to," she said. 

She carved her own path. One that has now become a reference point for aspiring female entrepreneurs. "I've never been a man, so I can't make a direct comparison," she smiles. 

"But I do know the questions I've had to answer as a female founder are not always the ones men are asked. I've gotten questions about my personal life, about my marital status, and whether I have any children. Those things don't seem to be really appropriate.

"I've also gotten feedback that I'm challenged more or differently than my male counterparts, that I've been held to a higher standard. There are countless studies that validate this fact for female founders everywhere. However, I think that this ends up being an advantage, even a secret weapon — having to be prepared for more aggressive questions about my business than my peers made me a better CEO. Numerous studies have found that women-led businesses tend to outperform on capital efficiency and returns," she added.

"Being held to a higher standard pushes you to build a better product, a stronger company, and ultimately, become a better leader.".

Sylvana Quader Sinha. Sketch: TBS

Over time, Sylvana became the kind of leader she once searched for. At Praava, approximately half the leadership team have been women, a rare statistic in Bangladesh's corporate landscape.

"I never imagined that we would be able to attract so much incredible female talent at Praava, especially at the leadership levels. For most of the time that I was the CEO of the company, about half of our management team had been women. I think that female leaders attract and groom other female leaders," she said.

Still, she is quick to credit the men who stood beside her. 

"Strong teams are diverse teams — the data is clear that diversity drives better outcomes. Men and women bring different but complementary strengths: women often think holistically, while men may zero in on specific angles. The best results come from bringing those different problem-solving styles together."

What defines a strong female entrepreneur?

"The same qualities that define a strong male entrepreneur. Resilience. Patience. Emotional maturity. And the belief that your vision matters, even when others don't see it yet," she says. "It's not easy, but the impact you can have makes it all worth it."

Sylvana transitioned into the role of Chair of the Board at Praava in March this year.

Tasfia Tasbin

From enduring deep personal loss at a young age to co-founding one of Bangladesh's most globally recognised startups, Tasfia Tasbin's journey is a story of grit, passion and bold innovation. Where many might have seen setbacks, she saw stepping stones.

No one expected Tasfia to finish school, let alone excel. But with the support of her teachers and friends, she defied expectations, later earning a degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from Chattogram University of Engineering and Technology (CUET).

Yet, the path was anything but easy. "When I was in university, some peers would say I had wasted a public university seat because I was a girl," Tasfia recalls. "They thought I'd get married, run a household, and the degree would be lost on me. That's still how society sees women in STEM."

Instead, university ignited her passion for robotics and coding, and Tasfia thrived in student competitions.

Her professional journey began as an IoT developer at DataSoft Systems Bangladesh, followed by a part-time stint at the ICT Division's a2i platform, where she discovered her strengths in leadership and project management. But her big leap came when she joined a friend's AI startup, Gaze, as a technical manager, on zero salary, believing wholeheartedly in the promise of artificial intelligence.

At Gaze, she quickly rose to the role of Head of Operations, gaining firsthand experience in both technical development and stakeholder coordination. Her expertise caught the attention of major organisations like Magnito Digital, DMP, Skitto, MGI, and Praava Health, to whom she offered free consultancy. At the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, she was affectionately called "IT Apa".

Tasfia Tasbin. Sketch: TBS

But Tasfia wanted to solve a larger problem, one she had witnessed repeatedly: small businesses, especially female-led ones, lacked access to affordable digital marketing. In 2020, amidst the pandemic, she co-founded Markopolo.ai with her friend Rubaiyat Farhan, using her savings to launch the venture on Product Hunt.

"I think all women naturally have the entrepreneurial spirit and are driven by better financial decisions," she said. 

"Our mothers and grandmothers saved what little they had, often in tin boxes or by investing in gold. It may not be acknowledged, but those savings helped families survive rainy days. Considering how rapidly gold appreciates in value, that's actually a smart investment."

Today, Markopolo.ai is a thriving, globally recognised marketing automation platform. In 2023, Tasfia and Rubaiyat were named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in the Media, Marketing & Advertising category.

Still, the path has challenges and Tasfia marks the banking and financing sector as the key one.

"Banks still hesitate to lend to women-led businesses, even when they're profitable," she notes. 

"There's a long way to go."

Tasfia firmly believes that female-led businesses are inherently resilient and visionary.

"From what I've seen, women come into the market with long-term plans. They don't settle for mediocrity," she says. 

"They build to last."