Mr. Nazmul Islam, the Founder and CEO of Fabric Lagbe, shared his innovative ideas and constructive criticism of the textile industry and Bangladesh’s current startup ecosystem in an interview with Colors Magazine.

“The current textile industry has embraced the changes of the industrial revolution in its manufacturing process, although the root-level textile mills and artisans are yet to update their marketing, sales, purchase, distribution, logistics, and disbursement strategies,” Mr. Nazmul identifies this acute problem.

Fabric Lagbe has discovered an all-inclusive solution and a one-stop service point for local textile traders, manufacturers, and weavers by shifting them from offline trade to an online marketplace.

“Our goal is to transform the complex structure of the textile business into a simpler one, ensuring the least quality product, the lowest procurement cost, the fastest delivery, and the proper valuation of goods,” Mr. Nazmul explains his unique selling point.

From providing the raw materials and machinery needed to produce a thread to selling a ready product, Fabric Lagbe combines every unit on one platform where the transparency of both the seller and buyer is the prime concern.

A Data-Driven Analysis of the Existing Problem

Mr. Nazmul goes on, “There are around 15 lac artisans in the handloom business and 8 thousand SME textile factories in Bangladesh. The current valuation of this market is 20 billion USD. Surprisingly, this huge market works completely offline and is untapped in this booming era of e-commerce. The artisans sell their products in the local weekly markets, which are commonly called ‘haats’.” Or a third party and used so many intermediaries with credit payment systems.

“In case the products remain unsold, and then the owners cannot buy the raw materials, and if they cannot buy the raw materials, then the human resources behind this manufacturing process have to stay idle, which, as a result, reduces their contribution to the country’s GDP,” he adds further.

Fabric Lagbe aims to simplify this process by incorporating all the counterparts of the textile industry, specifically handloom and SME textile business owners. He reminiscences about the beginning of the journey of an entrepreneur.

Mr. Nazmul explains, “I remember initiating startups with 17 business ideas in my 22-year-long career in business and facing failure multiple times, but it did not stop me.”

He goes on, “As I had already been working in this industry for 12 years, I could identify one significant problem here. We were running a stagnant business with the same age-old theory. My family business, ‘Nushiba Textile Industries, was exporting products worth millions of dollars, but there was no growth or change. The garment and textile industries have hugely impacted the economy and GDP of Bangladesh for over 50 years by bringing in the lion’s share of its foreign remittances. But, so far to my knowledge, no one has tried to link the IT-based industry with this broad industry.”

“It is indeed a complex industry to be brought onto a compact platform. Each stakeholder in this industry comes with different types of expertise. But we have come up with Fabric Lagbe to incorporate all of them in one place.”

Mr. Nazmul continues, “Trust and relationship building are the keys to any business. In the case of online platforms, it is way more important. Suppliers at the root level are not yet educated enough about the rising tech-based economy. Our research and quality control team work on this point to ensure the best of the whole service.”

He explains further, “For example, when a sample of a product is presented with certain details and the bulk delivered lacks those, we confront the seller and take action immediately. Over time, this process has worked as an efficient filter for the buyers and sellers on our platform, and now we can certainly bet on all our clients’ consistency.”

Hard Work Paid Off: A Remarkable Success for Fabric Lagbe

The startup recently earned the Prime Minister’s recognition at the Startup Bangladesh Summit and earned the Championship (Beating 6848 startups) of Bangabandhu Innovation Grant 2023. Expressing his gratitude and humbleness on this point, Mr. Nazmul notes, “These accomplishments are badges of pride for Fabric Lagbe’s effort behind a continuous contribution to the textile industry.”

Marking this as an achievement in his startup, Nazmul talks about the proposal of allocating Tk2,368 crore for the IT sector in the budget for the 2023–24 fiscal year by Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal.

“One thing I can assure you about the rising trend of the startup ecosystem is that if the government allocates 2000+ crores for us, we can multiply it 20 times and bring it back to the country. We have that potential now,” Mr. Nazmul bets. 

The current funding of Fabric Lagbe is $95K By equity from institute venture capital, $95k as a grant, and $20 k by equity from angel investors, which it has earned from Startup Bangladesh, a venture capital venture of the Bangladesh Government, and $20K from a renowned angel investor. After making a mark in Bangladesh, Fabric Lagbe intends to extend its reach internationally.

Mr. Nazmul shares his keen observation on foreign venture capitals, “The last summit of Startup Bangladesh has opened a new door for the startup ecosystem of Bangladesh, ensuring exposure to the whole world. I am personally connected to around 24 foreign venture capitalists currently regarding negotiations, terms and conditions, and valuation. And many of them are highly interested in investing in Bangladeshi startups for several reasons.”

Mr. Nazmul elaborates that Bangladesh, as a nation, is bestowed with some blessings. We have a massive workforce within a very small geographical area where one can travel from one place to another within a very short time. The hardworking and consistent nature of the people here, especially the youth, has become evident to foreign investors recently, which makes the current startup ecosystem highly likely to attract foreign funding.

A Calculative Future Plan with Bird’s Eye Observations

About expanding his business internationally, he refers to the 8 thousand textile factories in Bangladesh, among which almost 3 thousand manufacture fabric for export purposes, the rest are just following the footprints of their ancestors.

His findings suggest that most of the owners lack proper communication skills and appropriate knowledge of the export system; some are even short of basic resources like Bank History, trade licenses, ERC, VAT, L/C, and other documents.

Mr. Nazmul expresses his calculative plan for Fabric Lagbe, “Now, we plan to educate the owners of at least 3 thousand SME textile factories within the next 2 years on digital literacy and the whole process of exporting fabric to foreign countries. And finally, after that, we hope to expand Fabric Lagbe internationally.”

“For the time being, we will gather more experience on the export system before onboarding it to Fabric Lagbe’s platform so that we can do it without a single failed attempt,” Mr. Nazmul adds.

A word from One Leader to Another

During the entire conversation with Mr. Nazmul, he expresses his welcoming nature toward entrepreneurs rather than a competitive outlook. Considering others as fellows but competitors, he wishes more people would come up with platforms like Fabric Lagbe, as he believes that the textile and garment industry is so vast that it can feed 50 more platforms like Fabric Lagbe.

For the future leaders in the evolving startup generation, Mr. Nazmul suggests a structure for their growth: “Start with units and then advance towards the whole market.”

He explains from his own experience, “It is my evaluation from my journey that any business should initiate working with a niche market and then gradually opt for the whole market if it wishes to.”

He further elaborates, “I had started Fabric Lagbe with 11 categories. 6 months later, we realized that it was not a sustainable plan and reduced our focus to 4 categories. After another 6 month experiment, we came down to 2 categories, fabric and handmade products. That is when we achieved success in the real sense.”

“The advantage of selecting a particular niche is that you can master yourself in that genre, and therefore you can offer your target clients authentic and convincing reasons to onboard,” he sums up.

Identifying one problem at a time and finding its solution is the key to success for Fabric Lagbe. With better research and development strategies, Mr. Nazmul aims to diversify his venture and ensure Fabric Lagbe’s constant contribution to the digitalization of the textile industry.