India is one of the most useful case studies for young entrepreneurs in Bangladesh looking for unique and new ideas for businesses. The two countries have a lot in common – young, growing population, mobile-first internet adoption, cash-heavy consumer habits, dense cities, and a large informal sector which is slowly growing profitable. India has already begun tackling some of these opportunities, and founders in Bangladesh can easily take inspiration.
The head start is the opportunity. You don’t have to guess whether a specific model would work; instead, you can read Indian operator blogs, funding announcements, and failure post-mortems to decide whether the same conditions exist in Dhaka, Chattogram, or Khulna.
The ecosystem in Bangladesh is ready for it. We now have more than 2,500 active startups, according to the UN ESCAP Bangladesh Startup Ecosystem Assessment. But the money is still heavily skewed towards Dhaka, which means that whole sectors remain virtually unexplored.
Below are five ideas inspired by the Indian template and how they would translate into a local, Bangladeshi business model.
- Box cricket turf arenas.
Box cricket turfs – enclosed, netted, floodlit pitches rented by the hour – went from a niche to an industry in Indian cities in under a decade. The India artificial turf market was around USD 351.5 million in 2025 and is projected to keep growing, per IMARC Group, with sports venues as the main driver.
Crucially, India didn’t stop at the turf. A second layer grew on top: booking apps like Playo, Hudle and KheloMore, plus corporate leagues, weekend tournaments and coaching partnerships that fill the dead daytime hours.
Why this would work in Bangladesh: Cricket is a national obsession, very much the same as in India. Open ground in Dhaka has essentially disappeared, which makes this an interesting opportunity. Leasing land or a rooftop is a good start to building a cricket turf arena. Bookings can be taken through apps using slots and not informal phone calls.
- Cold-chain micro-hubs.
India has companies like Ninjacart and DeHaat that rebuild fresh-produce distribution by owning aggregation points and moving volume with predictable quality. They have turned cold storage into an infrastructure that farmers can easily rent.
Bangladesh fits because agriculture accounts for around 40% of employment, with roughly 20 million farmers. Post-harvest loss can be a huge pain point. Crops can survive in the fields and still die in transit.
A simple solution could be to build small, modular cold rooms in and around growing clusters in the farming districts. Sell it as a service, which could be paid for per crate or per day.
- Vocational training for freelancers.
Indian companies like Physics Wallah showed that vernacular, low-priced, high-volume education beats premium English-medium edtech in a price-sensitive market, which is a trait Bangladesh shares with India.
Bangladesh also has a growing surge of freelance labour, and the demand for skills is not always academic. Vocational, job-outcome training in Bangladesh is still not as crowded as it should be.
Vocational training courses with a narrow curriculum of marketable skills such as Shopify store management, video editing skills, paid-ads buying, or bookkeeping for foreign SMEs can be a lucrative business idea. Affordable courses aimed towards freelance professionals are still a relatively unexplored area.
- Furniture and appliance rental subscription.
Rentomojo and Furlenco bet that young urban renters would rather rent a sofa and dining table than buy one. They move every year and don’t want to own any heavy furniture or appliances.
Dhaka is a city of renters, bachelors, and families who relocate often for work or other reasons. Furnishing a flat is already expensive, and then the cost of moving said furniture is even higher.
A simple business model that fits such a young culture is a subscription model that lets people rent standardised bundles of furniture and appliances – “bachelor studio”, “one-bedroom apartment”, “two-bedroom family apartment”, etc.
- A wedding services marketplace.
WedMeGood is an excellent example of a platform that makes the chaotic but essential industry of weddings into a more manageable marketplace.
Bangladeshi weddings are also multi-day affairs with substantial expenditure and a need for various services. Venues, catering, decoration, photography, makeup, and mehendi – there are too many requirements for a wedding.
A singular marketplace could effectively serve the needs of a large population. Listing popular decorators, caterers, and videographers on one platform not only makes it much easier to host a wedding, but also creates an easy model of earning through commissions that already exist out there.
But not everything transfers from India.
India does have other popular new business models that cannot always apply to Bangladesh due to legal or cultural restrictions. For instance, the fantasy sports and real money gaming boom in India has a very specific legal loophole and cannot be replicated here. Nevertheless, the growth of UPI has led to an exponential growth of betting sites with sign-up bonuses of as little as 200 rupees.
But even without some of these other prohibited business ideas, there is still a lot we can learn from the Indian examples of startups and successful business models.
The ideas above aren’t secrets. Most of them have someone circling already. What decides them is execution on the unglamorous parts – the lease, the permit, the supply relationship, and the grind it would take to take these ideas and turn them into successful businesses.
