When Debasish Chakraborty and Sangita Bhattacharjee arrived at Cornell University to pursue their master’s degrees, they knew they wanted to build a company that could solve a meaningful problem at scale. Their first opportunity came through the Cornell eLab Accelerator, where they pitched an early business idea and received a small grant to establish a company in the United States.
But instead of building from a distance, they returned to Bangladesh to immerse themselves in the realities of the market. Rather than immediately launching a technology platform, they became FMCG distributors themselves, speaking with more than 200 small businesses to understand the challenges they faced every day.
It was only after experiencing the distribution ecosystem first-hand that they uncovered a problem worth solving. While distributors could sell products, many struggled to purchase their next batch of inventory because their cash was tied up in receivables.
Accessing funding through traditional channels was often too slow to keep pace with the fast-moving nature of FMCG distribution.
That insight changed everything.
The founders made the difficult decision to pivot away from their original idea and build Chamak Solutions, an AI-powered inventory funding and automated underwriting platform designed to help distributors access short-term inventory financing exactly when they need it.
Read more: Shondhibazar: Connecting Farmers and Families Through Safe Food
Shortly afterward, Nayeem Reza, Debasish’s BUET classmate based in Germany, joined as co-founder and CTO, strengthening the company’s technical capabilities. Within the first month of the pivot, Chamak found strong product-market fit, confirming that the founders had identified a problem far more urgent than the one they had originally set out to solve.
The pivot, however, came with uncertainty.
At the time, Chamak had received only two small grants and had very limited resources. Changing direction meant abandoning months of work and restarting much of the validation process from scratch. It was one of the founders’ most difficult moments, but instead of becoming attached to their original solution, they chose to remain committed to understanding the problem.
That experience taught them one of their biggest entrepreneurial lessons:
Founders should never fall in love with an idea; they should fall in love with the problem they are trying to solve.
Today, Chamak’s AI-powered underwriting technology enables businesses to be assessed using verified data in a fraction of the time required by traditional manual underwriting, making ultra-short-term inventory financing commercially viable. Since launching, the company has supported more than 400 businesses and facilitated over BDT 100 crore in inventory financing, helping distributors keep their businesses running without interruption. Some businesses have reported 20–30% increases in income after gaining timely access to inventory funding, demonstrating how faster financial decisions can translate directly into business growth.
Despite this progress, the founders believe Bangladesh’s startup ecosystem still has significant room to evolve. While technology businesses are emerging rapidly, regulatory processes often struggle to keep pace with new business models. They advocate for a more adaptive approach to policymaking—one in which entrepreneurs, businesses, and policymakers work together to design regulations that reflect the realities of innovation. Stronger digital infrastructure, better founder support, and continuous dialogue between regulators and startups, they believe, are essential for Bangladesh’s next generation of technology companies to thrive.
As alumni of Orange Corners Bangladesh, Chamak’s founders have benefited from mentorship, networking, and a community of fellow entrepreneurs who challenged them to view their business from new perspectives. Those conversations helped refine both their strategy and leadership as they prepared to scale. Looking ahead, the team aims to establish Chamak as Bangladesh’s leading infrastructure for inventory financing, using technology to ensure that small businesses spend less time waiting for capital and more time growing their businesses.
Orange Corners Bangladesh is an initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, implemented by YY Ventures to support young entrepreneurs in building sustainable, investment-ready businesses. The programme is delivered with strategic support from Unilever Bangladesh and Grameen Healthcare Trust, providing founders with world-class incubation, mentorship, coaching, networking, and access to funding opportunities.
For more updates, stay with Markedium.
Leave a comment