Offshore software development in Bangladesh

Today I will make a case for outsourcing software projects to Bangladesh.

The new offshoring destination in the block

Bangladesh is fast becoming a major player in software development outsourcing. The volume of software projects offshored here has doubled almost every year for the last couple of years. More than twenty thousand people are now working in software or IT services industry. The software industry in Bangladesh is mainly involved with exporting services like custom software development, SQA, design and graphics to European and North American markets.

Micro offshoring revolution! 

Separate to this formal sector, a huge informal sector of Bangladeshi freelancers are driving a micro-sourcing and micro offshoring revolution! Bangladesh consistently tops the freelance work location on sites like oDesk, eLance. This is really an amazing phenomenon, driven mostly by teenagers! 

​Average cost of a 25 people software project. 

Source: KPMG study

Bottomless resource pool

Bangladesh is the 8th most populous country in the world. There is a huge supply of young, trained and English speaking (English being taught from day one at our schools - a side effect of being an ex-British colony) resources. The total cost operation for a typical software offshoring operation is almost 40% lower than countries like India or Philippines. Apart from resource costs other costs like infrastructure, support and management the price advantage with competing outsourcing destinations is significant. Cost of living in India for example is fast becoming comparable with countries like Malaysia or Thailand and thus the future of outsourcing advantage to India is decreasing every year.

This is where Bangladesh outshines others - with very similar educational standards, Bangladeshi resource pool is not fully tapped and its potential to become a major software outsourcing destination is exactly like India of the 90's. A recent KPMG study is a very good read to get an idea about this. 

Maturity of the industry

Software organizations are also becoming mature and standardized. Companies like us that has been doing software development outsourcing from Bangladesh since 2004 have gained huge experience over time. The wide range of projects that we (and other companies around us) have done exposed our developers, testers and mangers to the challenges of software development process. This has created a strong base of experienced, mature and skilled resource who in turn mentors new comers in the profession. A lot of our alumnus has formed separate companies of their own to do offshored software projects, and have carried on the maturity and experience into new areas of works. This migration has also had an effect of evolution on the culture of workplace and software creativity that Kaz values.

More such companies are being setup with proper development  process and management required for outsourcing needs. The creative culture for software development of such organizations are also noteworthy.

We look forward to a great future in software outsourcing in Bangladesh.

N.B. Just in case you are new here: we are a custom software company  in Bangladesh making custom web, desktop and mobile apps for other companies and being very good at it! Check out this page to know more about our software development work culture and environment.