Shikho offers academic courses for the Bangladeshi national curriculum secondary school certificate, higher secondary school certificate, and competitive university entrance exams. Its platform provides on-demand video lessons, live classes with tutors, data analytics to track performance and progress, and more.

Nearly 350,000 users across 64 districts of Bangladesh are using Shikho’s mobile platform, which launched in November 2020. Paid subscribers currently spend an average of 68 minutes on the app daily, according to the company.

Shikho was founded in 2019 by Shahir Chowdhury and Zeeshan Zakaria.

The country received more than $750 million in local and foreign investment in the startup sector over the last decade, State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said.

Mentioning that the country currently accommodates over 22,500 startups, he added that the government was financially supporting the businesses through its initiatives – Startup Bangladesh Limited and Bangabandhu Innovation Grant. 

The state minister disclosed these while virtually addressing a program at the ICT Tower in the capital on Wednesday. 

Startup Bangladesh, the flagship venture capital fund of the ICT ministry, organized the event to sign agreements to provide Tk17 crore in investment aid to 8 startups in the second phase under its campaign "Shotoborshe Shoto Asha".

The bank also announced that the new investment would not change its shareholding in bKash

Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank is going to enter Bangladesh by acquiring a 20% of stake in the mobile financial service (MFS) giant bKash.

BRAC Bank Ltd, the majority owner of bKash, in its board meeting approved the relevant share purchase and subscription agreement among bKash, its existing shareholders, and the proposed investor SoftBank Vision Fund II BEAM (DE) LLC.

The SoftBank Fund, which invested in India's e-commerce platform FlipKart, would make both primary and secondary investments in bKash, Brac Bank disclosed in a piece of price-sensitive information on Wednesday evening.

The bank also announced that the new investment would not change its shareholding in bKash.

The winners of the IBCOL 2021 received more than $40,000 as prizes

Bangladesh has won four awards including a Silver Award in International Blockchain Olympiad.

"This technology will be used in every aspect of our industrial sector," State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak said at the Olympiad's closing and award-giving ceremony at ICT Tower in Agargaon, Dhaka on Sunday evening.

"Therefore, my call to the participants in the competition, the capital market, the finance ministry, and the country's private sector to emphasize the importance of this technology." 

Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network.