INB 372.

9
SME DRAFT

Serial no. 27 ID: 1831279630 Name: Nimra

Case study of a Bangladesh SME: iPhone café

E-commerce is emerging as one of the fastest growing industry and trends.

iPhone café, founded by Mr. Mozzamel Hoque Himel is a Dhaka based e-commerce Facebook
webpage that was started in 2014 in Bangladesh, the time when e-commerce wasn’t very popular
in Bangladesh. The business mainly deals with the imports phone and electronic accessories to
Bangladesh.

E-commerce without trade license in Bangladesh

Back in 2014, there were no specific rules and regulations regarding ecommerce. So, the owner
started the venture without any trade restrictions. One major ignorance in the business was a
missing trade license as there was no pressure from the government to have a trade license in e-
commerce. As the government at that time didn’t consider E-commerce as a business category.
Despite the fact that the owner had no trading license, the business was running smoothly and
was quite profitable, until the decided to expand their product ranges and the quantity of product
shipment. For this, they required funding. The founder applied for a bank loan, since the business
had no permanent commercial address or any legal documents to provide to the bank to assess
the value of the company set a term loan their loan was rejected. Next they opted for private
loans. But failed since no private investor’s wanted to risk their money in a business with no
trading license. “The fact it was an e-commerce page it wasn’t worth for them to take risk by
investing in such businesses” said the founder Mr. Himel. These were the tough times for the
business as it lacked funds to function properly.
To overcome this hassle the founder decided to finally get a trading license on 2019 from the
union parishad in Narayanganj.
Once they got the trade license it opened doors to many opportunities to this business. From
getting required funds and the opportunity to expand the business. iPhone café now plans to start
an omni channel to deliver the products and set up outlets in jamuna future park in Bashundhara.

Covid-19 and iPhone café

Another hurdle that iPhone café faced was during the 2020 pandemic. Since, most of their import
comes from China, the delivery of the goods was delayed and the freight costs were abnormally
increased. The airport authorities of Bangladesh also restricted goods from foreign countries due
to the covid lockdown. This led to less shipment and less stocks of goods. Ultimately, most of
the existing customers switched on to the competitor’s products who were fully stocked despite
the circumstances. This negatively impacted their total revenue.
To mitigate the damages caused due to the shift of the customers the have applied the following
measures
 • Extra discounts
• Superfast delivery
• Maximized the use of digital payments in the business and encourage the customers to
pay bills via Mobile Financial Services (MFS) like Bkash, Nagad etc. to avoid physical
contact and ensure the safety of the customers.

Currently their business is in a stable position now and are slowly recovering from the losses
caused due to switching customer costs.