IT, BPO firms staring at ruinous future

The country's promising export-oriented IT firms and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, which fetch close to $1 billion a year, are fearing getting dropped by their foreign clients after abruptly going off the grid on Thursday night for the internet blackout.

The nature of their work needs them to provide services to their clients round-the-clock and also submit tasks within a strict timeframe.

Bangladesh's internet blackout from 9:00pm Thursday, which came without any warning, meant that the companies could not inform their clients of the impending service disruption.

"We have not been able to inform our clients of our current situation -- even during the depths of the pandemic there was no service disruption," said Md Riajul Islam, chief executive officer of Bright River Bangladesh.

Bright River provides services to clients in 16 countries in North America and Europe and saw a bump in client intake following the pandemic as the firm proved itself to be a dependable service partner.

But now, due to this service disruption, the foreign clients will divert orders to other countries even if the rates are not as competitive as Bright River's.

"I don't know how many employees I have to say goodbye to now," Riajul said, while urging the government to restore the internet service immediately and block social media if need be so that they can at least do some damage control.

Being without internet for even a day is disastrous for BZM Graphic, which does photo processing for ecommerce companies with 3-12 hours' deadline, according to its Managing Director Apel Mahmud Khan.

BZM mostly works as the production partner of Pixelz, which processes photos for 50,000 e-commerce platforms around the world.

"We have built this relationship with Pixelz over eight years of quality work with great reliability."

But now, this partnership is most definitely in jeopardy as BZM was not even able to ask the client to look for a temporary vendor.

"Our clients would not only be deserting our company but also our country. They may lose confidence in Bangladesh completely," Apel Mahmud added.

The daily financial losses to the IT industry due to the internet outage is about Tk 80 crore, said Russell T Ahmed, president of the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services.

"If it continues longer, the overall image of Bangladesh as a reliable partner in IT services will be tarnished. The progress that Bangladesh made in digital services will also be on halt."

Supporting the government's move to stop the violence, he said a mechanism should be introduced so that the export-oriented firms can use internet to serve their global clients.

Apart from the daily financial losses of Tk 70-80 crore due to the internet outage, the country will face a long-term image crisis in the international market, said Rashad Kabir, managing director of software firm Dream71.

"The international buyers won't consider Bangladesh as an outsourcing destination in the future because commitment and timely delivery are most important for them."

There is a high chance that these buyers will shift to India, Vietnam, the Philippines and other competitor countries, according to Rashad.