Across Bangladesh, thousands of women have quietly built their own digital marketplaces – selling sarees, jewelry, and handmade crafts from their homes through Facebook and Instagram. These social media-based women entrepreneurs (SMBWE) have turned creativity into income and resilience into opportunity.
According to a study by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), there are now over 300,000 online store owners on Facebook in Bangladesh, and half of them are women. In 2020 alone, their combined revenue reached US$970 million. Yet, despite this massive contribution, most of them remain excluded from institutional funding and business development opportunities.
Bangladesh has launched several initiatives to boost entrepreneurship, Startup Bangladesh Limited, Bangladesh Bank’s 500 Crore Refinancing Fund, and the iDEA Project, offering grants and startup capital to new businesses.
But here’s the catch: most of these funds go to organized startups, the ones with access to professional business advisors who can prepare documents, build financial projections, and navigate complex application procedures.
Meanwhile, women running Facebook-based businesses, often informally from home, lack these professional resources. As a result, they remain invisible to the very systems designed to support entrepreneurship.
A recent national workshop hosted by BIDA and UNDP in Dhaka (2025) confirmed these structural gaps. Entrepreneurs and policymakers pointed to a lack of trust in financing, unclear bank guidelines, and absence of skilled advisory professionals as major barriers to inclusive startup growth.
The outcome? Women-led micro-ventures the backbone of digital entrepreneurship in Bangladesh are left outside the funding loop.
While many women start strong, their businesses often stagnate or shut down after the first phase of growth.
The ESCAP study found that more than half of these women reinvest their profits to grow their business capital. Yet, for 50% of them, this capital still remains below BDT 40,000 (US$473) – far too little for expansion or stability. Around 40% experience a drop or no improvement in sales, often leading to closure.
Why does this happen?
Because most of these women operate without business guidance – learning through trial and error. The study identified five recurring challenges:
Without a mentor or advisor to help them plan, forecast, and formalize their operations, these entrepreneurs struggle to sustain growth.
A business advisory acts like a compass, helping small entrepreneurs move from intuition to strategy. For Bangladesh’s SMBWEs, it can be the bridge between informal success and long-term sustainability.
Business advisors can help women structure their businesses legally, digitize their transaction records, and prepare financial statements. With only 7.76% of SMBWE funding currently coming from institutions, this professionalization is key to unlocking access to loans, grants, and investment.
Many women entrepreneurs excel at creativity but lack exposure to strategic planning, marketing analytics, or pricing models. Advisors can train them on digital tools, bookkeeping apps, and brand-building, turning social media engagement into measurable growth.
Advisory support helps entrepreneurs understand cash flow, margins, and capital needs. Financial literacy ensures they can pitch to banks confidently, negotiate with suppliers, and reinvest wisely, creating stronger, scalable businesses.
Advisors can also guide SMBWEs toward eco-friendly and socially responsible practices – from ethical sourcing to reducing packaging waste. Sustainability isn’t just about the environment; it’s about building businesses that last.
Bangladesh’s digital women entrepreneurs represent one of the most underutilized forces in its economy. If even 10% of these 150,000 women received structured advisory support and access to finance, they could collectively add billions to national GDP, create local jobs, and advance multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – particularly Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8).
Business advisory firms and development partners must therefore collaborate to make this happen. Setting up district-level advisory hubs, offering peer learning networks, and integrating financial readiness training could turn today’s informal sellers into tomorrow’s sustainable business leaders.
Bangladesh’s women entrepreneurs are already transforming the digital landscape – one post, one product, and one story at a time. What they lack is not ambition but access — access to structured advice, digital tools, and inclusive financing.
If government programs like Startup Bangladesh and iDEA are the engines of entrepreneurship, then business advisory is the ignition. It ensures that every woman with a smartphone and a vision can not only start a business but sustain and scale it – turning social media ventures into sustainable enterprises that strengthen families, communities, and the national economy.
The path to inclusive growth isn’t about creating more startups. It’s about making sure no one is left out of the funding loop.
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