We fund Bangladesh’s most promising founders, hone their leadership capabilities, strengthen their business acumen, and help validate their big ideas as they transition into investable business.
For over a decade, we have taught leadership to more than five thousand of Bangladesh’s most promising young women and men. Having mentored many of them who have gone on to launch their own companies, we have seen firsthand the challenges startups face in their early stages.
We created BYLC Ventures to help passionate young founders get kick-started with their big ideas. We do this by providing technical support to validate a product or solution and seed funding to go fast to market. We also provide a set of acceleration support including a plug-and-play commercial space to work from, customized business training led by successful CEO-turned-mentors, and a suit of professional support such as legal, accounting, and corporate governance.
We aim to invest, together with local angels and institutional investors, in at least 20 startups every year.
A two-weeks long rigorous bootcamp on team building, product and marketing validation, financial and legal framework.
BYLC's world-class business accelerator training, led by industry experts, offers training on strategies and best entrepreneurship practices from top leaders around the world. Leave BYLC Venture’s accelerator training with a solid strategic plan and a network of partners, investors, and mentors.
Designed to help you thrive in a challenging business environment, our curriculum has been co-created with globally recognized experts with a proven track record of running accelerators
Using experiential teaching methods, our workshops focus on building your capacity to better understand and manage yourself as well as to inspire and mobilize others toward common business goals
Whether an elevator pitch to a potential business contact or building an investor deck, we help you sell your numbers and potential to investors, new team members, and business partners
Real investors, angel and institutional, from Bangladesh and abroad have signed up with us to give you "brutally honest" feedback when you need it the most—during the business building phase
Our in-house experts, who have previously raised funding from international VCs, will provide guidance on managing your accounts and how best to build your financial models
Lawyers from our legal partner organization will provide full board secretarial support as well as contract vetting
Bi-weekly check-ins with resident entrepreneurs to push you towards your goals and help you make mid-course corrections
Matching each founder with an experienced founder from a closely related industry for expert advice and mentoring
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No, it does not cost anything to apply to BYLC Ventures. If you are selected, then you will have to participate in the next stages, which is the BYLC Ventures bootcamp.
BYLC Ventures will absorb most of the costs associated with the accelerator program. However, there will be a fee of BDT 200,000 to cover costs of company formation, legal fees for company secretarial support, leadership coaching, and a virtual CFO. This amount will be deducted from the BDT 800,000 awarded to the winning startups.
We believe that social impact and profitability are not necessarily mutually exclusive. BYLC Ventures is looking for entrepreneurs who have creative ways of addressing socio-economic challenges through business acumen.
We are a sector-agnostic, early stage accelerator program. However, we will give preference to businesses that have shown some traction in the market.
Selected startups will get in-house mentoring and networking support along with a seed funding of BDT 800,000 with the option of BDT 2,000,000 as additional scale-up funding, as well as a fully furnished co-working space for one year in Dhaka, access to a world-class business accelerator curriculum, connection to investors, full legal and financial support, and rigorous leadership training.
We receive and process applications from all over Bangladesh. Regardless of their base of operations, the founders of the winning teams will have to attend the accelerator program at BYLC premises at 28 Mokhakhali C/A, Dhaka. The co-working space is also located at the same venue.
The application for the fifth cohort of BYLC Ventures begins from May 15, 2022 where the most promising business ideas will be chosen from a large number of applications. Through rigorous assessments, 50 of the most promising ideas will be selected to attend the BYLC Ventures Bootcamp in July 2022. Based on the performance of the bootcamp, up to 7 companies will be able to secure a place in our accelerator program beginning from September 2022.
At least two co-founders must be present in each session. Co-founders need to be present for at least 10 hours per week. Our curriculum and mentoring is customized based on the learning needs of each cohort. Therefore, missing out on the sessions will mean that the essential teaching of the program has not been imparted to the people running the business.