The second day of 1st International Conference on Business and Management, September 22, 2017 at the Westin Hotel, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Industry Talk session was chaired by Prof. Dr. Mirza Azizul Islam, Former Adviser of Caretaker Government, People’s Republic of Bangladesh and Professor of BRAC Business School and Prof. Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed, Former Governor of Bangladesh bank (The Central bank of Bangladesh) and Professor of BRAC Business School. In the introductory speech, Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed urged, ‘It’s the people behind everything and they should be trained and motivated for the society.’ Dr. Mirza Azizul Islam also pointed out that the country lacked skilled manpower and the issue had to be considered with importance.

Mr. Syed Abdul Momen, Head of SME, BRAC Bank limited as the first speaker in the industry talk session. Taking the floor, Mr. Momen provided an outline of how the bank pioneered in providing dedicated services for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and promoted sustainable economic, social and environmental development being a member of The Global Alliance for Banking on Values. He shared some statistics with the audience to give an overview of the customer segmentation of BRAC Bank Limited. He informed the audience that 76 per cent of BRAC Bank’s customers are from micro and cottage enterprises segment while the rest 24 per cent are from small enterprises. Now going into the further segmentation of SME customers’ we get to see 75 per cent of small business loans the bank disbursed every month were in rural areas around the country while 25 per cent were in Dhaka and Chittagong districts.

Sharing the future plan of BRAC Bank Mr. Momen said currently they are concerned about looking for ways to stimulate and support SME across the country and in near future they are on the way to “Promote Digitalization”. After that he gave a brief overview on how BRAC Bank had taken the services to the door steps of their customers so that they can avail the services in the shortest possible time. Finally, he concluded his speech emphasizing on conducting researches time to time to do the impact analysis.
Second speaker of this session, Mr. Syed Waseque Md Ali, Managing Director, First Security Islami Bank (FSIB) graced the floor with his presence and shared his view on how following the suggestions given by policy makers and findings of several researches, after 18 years of operations FSIB changed its track from a conventional Bank to an Islami Bank in 2009. After that, he went on describing the scenario of Islamic Banking from the perspective of Bangladesh in terms of profit sharing, safekeeping, joint venture and cost plan. Later on he concluded his speech highlighting the contribution of FSBI to the overall Bangladeshi Banking sector.

Last but not the least, Mr. ASM Mainuddin Monem, the Deputy Managing Director of Abdul Monem Ltd., was Industry Talk speaker. Throughout his speech, he emphasized on research and developments to bring the best minds of Bangladesh in a funnel to flourish innovation. Moreover, Mr. Monem also shared his vision to develop an ‘Innovation and Research Institute’ on the 314-acre land provided by the government to establish economic zone.

To sum up, The Industry Talk Session of day two became successful in its purpose to edify audiences about different industries, their operational process, expansion strategies and future goals. Finally, the session ended with a Q&A session where the Vice Chancellor of BRAC University, Prof. Syed Saad Andaleeb, Ph.D. informed his audience that he had proposed the government to form a research council and suggested industries to provide funds in small amounts to develop a ‘Brain Trust’ in this regard. Among others, Prof. Dr. Iftekhar Ghani Chowdhury, Dean of BRAC Business School and General Chair of ICBM 2017 and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Md. Mamun Habib, Program Chair of ICBM 2017, were attended along with local and international dignitaries.