Waiz Rahim appointed MD of BSIC

Bangladesh Startup Investment Company (BSIC) PLC has appointed Waiz Rahim as its first managing director (MD) and CEO.

Prior to joining BSIC, he was serving as a venture partner for Bangladesh at Sturgeon Capital, a London-based venture capital and private equity firm managing $300 million across Central Asia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

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He raised more than $2.5 million in funding from institutional investors in Singapore and New York, gaining firsthand experience of the challenges of raising foreign venture capital in Bangladesh.

Under Bangladesh Bank’s guidance, BSIC was formed to mobilise domestic institutional capital for high-growth startups and strengthen the country’s venture capital and innovation ecosystem.

Its first fund, “Onkur”, has a corpus of Tk 425 crore and will co-invest alongside domestic and foreign investors. The fund is expected to exceed Tk 1,000 crore within five years, backed by a central bank guideline requiring banks to invest 1 percent of their annual profits in the startup equity fund.

He holds a degree in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Southern California, US.