Analysis of bKash Limited & Mobile Financial Services Industry in Bangladesh: An Internship Experience Perspective

Abstract

Bangladesh is a poor nation with 160 million people within a very small scale of the area is considered a county with one of the highest density. Which from a positive side is a very good place for businesses to grow for getting mass people available within very short reach. Mobile Financial Services operating in this country are facing a positive outcome of what they are doing. bKash provides both B2B and B2C services accumulating personal consumers & merchant consumers altogether. The Mobile Financial Services started near 2010/2011, and the idea of mobile banking was highly adopted by the people of Bangladesh. bKash seizing the opportunity to launch this organization after years of the survey, finally launched in 2011 and since then they have been constantly on the rise and growth operating in the Growth stage of their maturity cycle. The External, Technological, Political & Legal industry has been a near positive effect for the industry for which the MFS industry hasn’t been facing any huge drop of success in 10 years. But Regulatory factors were sometimes strict on the operation and limits. With this mixture of positive and negative effects, it can be said after the PESTEL analysis that it has a moderate effect on the industry. The Porter’s Five Forces model (Barriers to Entry, Supplier Power, Buyer Power, Threat of Substitute and Industry Rivalry) shows that the industry is more on the favorable terms than unfavorable term due to the various threats. Which again shows how well the industry is doing in the market. bKash is the only MFS company in Bangladesh to be having partners like Alipay, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and numerous international investors. They are the only company from this country to be enlisted as the 23rd fastest business that implements improvements focused on social concerns in 2017. They intend to offer easy, accessible, and efficient financial services and extend the scope of financial inclusion in the market and their main objective is to ensuring access to a wider range of financial services to the Bangladeshi people. Starting from 2011, they have achieved a lot of milestones over the years, they are only increasing in number every other day. They provide their services to all kinds of consumers available in the country starting from general people to government. Even though it’s a Mobile financial service like all other but their product variety and category is one of the best among all the competitors, they provide more than 10 types of products/services to their customers. bKash try to follow a very sophisticated organizational structure and functionality which increases their efficiency and productivity. bKash is considered as the market leader with various strengths and opportunities but they also have some threats and weaknesses that are holding them back to go skyrocket high. If they can execute proper strategies to improve their strengths, utilize their opportunities, eliminate threats, and overcome weaknesses, then they can lead the market with a very high gap in market share. bKash is at the No.1 position in the market right now with almost 60% market share solely. They have a great future ahead lying for them benefitting both customers and themselves. The internship experience for an intern working in the Commercial Division of the company goes to a very high workload and many decision-making processes. All the functions are operated very sophistically and they teach and train each intern as an individual. All the interns get their opportunities equally to prove themselves and implement their academic and extra-curricular skills on various tasks, and everyone has to understand the basic technological factors to work properly.