Bangladeshi startup Jahaji wins Stanford University’s seed spark program

Bangladeshi e-logistics startup ‘Jahaji’ has become one of the top six winners of ‘Seed Spark South Asia (Cohort 4) program’ of Stanford University in the USA for its problem-solving solutions and high growth potential.

The Jahaji also got featured on the prestigious Stanford University’s website.

Jahaji Ltd is the first ever Bangladeshi startup to win Seed Spark South Asia Cohort since its inception in 2020, says a press release.

Stanford Seed Spark is an online entrepreneurship program by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

A total of 140 South Asian ventures participated in this cohort and 20 were selected as finalists after five months of rigorous process. The juries later announced 6 startups as the winners of this cohort.

The other winners are India’s Xen Agritech Private Limited, Phonologix Health Solutions Pvt Ltd, Backyard Creators Private Limited, Autocracy Machinery Private Limited and MUSIC PANDIT.

Jahaji is Bangladesh’s first ever tracking-enabled b2b platform for Inland Water Transport (IWT) sector where vessel charterer can book freight vessels online, vessel owners and logistics companies can monitor vessel and real-time logistics movement in national waterways via a simple app, the press release adds.

Also, this app has an inbuilt job portal for inland staff where standard vessel crew can be hired after verifying the background and experience.

Jahaji has designed and developed low-cost vessel tracking device for inland mechanised vessel of Bangladesh, endorsed by the shipping ministry of Bangladesh.

Jahaji has already installed their tracking device on 500 vessels and created 6,000 crew profiles on this job portal.

Entrepreneurs Kajal Abdullah and Abhinandan Jotdar, two finance graduate from the University of Dhaka, founded the startup.

Kajal Abdullah, CEO of the startup, told Prothom Alo that Jahahi believes this success will attract the global investor to invest in Jahaji and explore a potential and unchartered territory IWT sector in Bangladesh and contribute to Delta 2100 Plan.

Earlier, Jahaji was amongst the top finalists of Bangabandhu Innovation Grant (BIG) 2021, an international startup competition hosted by the ICT division, Bangladesh.