Maliha Quadir is one of the top young and female entrepreneurs in the world. Successful Entrepreneur, Businesswoman, Leader these are a few words to describe her success.
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Maliha Quadir At a Glance
- Name: Maliha Malik Quadir
- School: South Breeze School
- High school: Scholastica
- BS: Smith College of US in Computer Science and Economics
- MBA: Harvard Business School in Management
- First job: Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in New York
- Spouse/Husband: Khalid Quadir
- Founder and MD: Shohoz.com
She is the founding Managing Director of Shohoz.com. Shohoz is the first online-based ticketing system. In terms of transactions, Shohoz is one of the leading startups in Bangladesh that is growing expeditiously.
Maliha M Quadir has successfully digitalized the unorganized transport system. And she turned it into a technological revolution in the transport industry of Bangladesh.
But the beginning of her journey was not that easy as we can see today. Nevertheless, her confidence and hard work made her one of the best women entrepreneurs in the world. Track record in multinational companies encourages her to build amazing company with business lines.
So if you want to know about her journey, let’s go through the article.
Early life of Maliha Quadir
Maliha Quadir was born and brought up in Dhaka for her first few years. Then she shifted to the US. Unfortunately, we could not get so much info about her parents.
Educational Background
Maliha Quadir completed her schooling at South Breeze School. After schooling, she completed her O level and A level from Scholastica.
She has done her BS from Smith College of US in Computer Science and Economics. She also took her MBA from Harvard Business School in Management.
She was an exceptionally meritorious student.
So when she applied for her MBA in five universities in the US. The names of the universities are Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and Wharton, and she got selected in all of them. Then she chose Harvard Business School and completed her MBA.
Career of Maliha M Quadir
After her MBA, Maliha Quadir started her career. Her first job was as an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in New York and San Francisco in 2000. She was working there in the Utilities Mergers and Acquisition department.
Then she joined the ISP called BRACNet Limited. While working on BRACNet, she founded an online portal in Bangladesh. After that, she worked with Standard Chartered Bank Singapore, where she worked for around one year.
Then she moved to the Nokia Mobile Phone, where she worked on Nokia Life Tools. There she covered many countries like India, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, and Nigeria,
Finally, she worked in Vistaprint’s digital business as a Director of Singapore.
Behind the Story of Shohoz
From the beginning, Maliha was a tech person. However, she always dreamed of her own business with fintech products. She dreamed of working or doing something for her own country Bangladesh.
That’s why she was looking for ideas to start an e-commerce business in Bangladesh. Then She found the idea of working with the transportation industry. She noticed that it was very disorganized and very challenging to bring digitization there. That’s how she started the startup “Shohoz.”
Bangladesh is a small and developing from poor country with 160 million people. The transportation system is one of the facts that connect them all. Here, she got the idea to make it a mass marketplace for business.
Thus Maliha Quadir thought to make this process easy for the people of Bangladesh by the startup ‘Shohoz.’
Why is the name “Shohoz”?
Shohoz means easy in Bengali. She got this idea from making life easy by offering all kinds of online services to the people of Bangladesh.
In 2014, Maliha Quadir founded a startup called Shohoz Limited. Then it was just a team of six people.
Initially, Shohoz started as an online Bus ticketing company. It provided long-distance ticket-selling services online for the first three years. This is how she made it a recognizable brand with the spread of services.
In 2018, Shohoz started to provide ride-hailing services and got a massive response.
Firstly it started with bikes inside Dhaka city. Later Shohoz also added cars in October, and the progress was excellent. Then they began to provide their bike riding service outside of Dhaka also.
It closed a $15 million funding round which was the highest for any tech company in Bangladesh. And a few business entrepreneurs can achieve this amount from investors like Golden Gate Ventures of Singapore.
Later it included various service providers like food delivery(Shohoz Food), ride-sharing, truck rental, health care, and learning material. And more on-demand services are going to be added to Shohoz in the future.
Her main aim is to empower people by solving and simplifying their daily problems. Besides this, she wishes to make their life easier (Shohoz) with tech-driven solutions.
At present, Shohoz is one of the biggest online service platforms in Bangladesh. Find the amazing growth story:
It has more than one lakh registered drivers. The one lakh drivers served 5 Million people to date with 350 employees. The great news is that it is the fastest-growing start-up.
It is growing with the vision of being a ubiquitous digital platform and a Super App. It is the most fast-growing e-commerce business in Bangladesh with the most significant number of services ie online ticketing, movie tickets, bike riding service, Shohoz foods at your dining table,
So no doubt Shohoz is going to be the first super app of Bangladesh shortly.
Achievement of Maliha Quadir
- In 2017, the World Economic Forum recognized her as one of the 100 Young Global Leaders (YGL).
- In 2019, Maliha Quadir received the Business Innovation Award in the American Alumni Association (AAA) Awards.
- During the same year, she won the Best Woman Entrepreneur Award at the third Digital Bangladesh Day by the ICT Ministry from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. It is one of the prestigious DYDF Youth Icon Awards in the Entrepreneurship Category.
- She also received The Daily Star Best ICT Startup of the year Award.
- Besides, she was recognized as one of the top 100 Global Female Founders by business insider magazine of UK.
Personal life
Maliha Quadir is married to Khalid Quadir who founded several business organizations. Khalid Quadir is the co-founder and managing partner of Brummer, Bangladesh. He is also the founder of BRACNet.
Khalid Quadir also came from an entrepreneurial family. He has two brothers Iqbal Quadir and Kamal Quadir, respectively.
Iqbal Quadir is the founder of the first mobile company of Bangladesh, the Grameen phone and Gonofone. WEF recognized him as a Global Leader of Tomorrow in 1999. In addition, he is one of the members of the World Wide Web Foundation Board of Directors.
On the other hand, Kamal Quadir is the founder of the first e-commerce of Bangladesh, CellBazar, and mobile financial service, bKash. In 2009, he was also a Young Global Leader by WEF.
Wrap Up
Shohoz founder Maliha Quadir is the most promising woman entrepreneur of Bangladesh. She is an inspiration for all the women entrepreneurs of Bangladesh. Her hard work, passion, and continuous effort towards her ambition have paid off in the form of her success.
According to her-
“Don’t wait for regulation to change. Instead, you should continuously operate with a sense of urgency. That’s something I regret. So often, unnecessarily waiting for things to happen, whereas taking action can make a huge difference.”
Maliha Quadir is an excellent example of a woman who can be an entrepreneur, a leader, and a businesswoman, a female founder of the online platform for Bangladeshi people for economic development.
Have a look at another women entrepreneur, Shomi Kaiser.
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