Fahim Saleh lit up Bangladesh’s start-up scene like no other

Fireflies, the unassuming insect species, have a short lifespan, but for as long as they live, they shine ever so brightly.

And one could say that Fahim Saleh, the 33-year-old Bangladeshi-American tech entrepreneur whose life was brutally hacked short, lived like a firefly.

The Daily Star spoke with a more than a dozen of Saleh’s friends, colleagues, close associates and relatives and the account pieced together depicts a man full of bright ideas who lit up the start-up scene in Bangladesh, who was always pulsing with excitement and a childlike sense of wonder, who set a shining example of never forgetting one’s root and generosity.

For a host of aspiring young tech entrepreneurs, Saleh was their Willy Wonka ever since he arrived in Bangladesh in 2014 as an adult.

He was not just their angel investor but also like an older brother who stood guard in times of danger, a mentor who guided them to reach their potential, and a constant source of inspiration.

HACKHOUSE: FROM WHERE IT ALL STARTED

On 26 March 2014, Abdur Rashid Tamxid was introduced to Saleh virtually through a friend. Two months later, they met in person, when Saleh visited Bangladesh after a big gap.

Born in Saudi Arabia and raised in the US, Saleh had visited his native country a few times with his parents as a child. This was the first time he was visiting the country of his origin, one which forged an indelible connection with Bangladesh.

“On the first day we met, Fahim wanted to know if there was any possibility of setting up a venture in Bangladesh. And he told me to form a team that would work on games development,” Tamxid told The Daily Star yesterday.

The next day, over lunch at a restaurant in Gulshan, the two hammered out a plan to form HackHouse. While sat at the restaurant, Saleh bought a domain under the name of HackHouse and developed a site. He asked Tamxid to sketch a few logos too.

That night, a logo was updated on the site and began scouting for local software developers with a focus on games.

On the following morning, they went looking for an office space.

“It was a boiling hot day and we were parched. We bought bottled water from a roadside shop and a street child came up to us and asked for water. On seeing this, Fahim said, ‘let’s distribute water’.”

And over the next 2 or 3 hours, Fahim distributed 10 to 12 cases of bottled water and 100 bottles of soft drinks to people on the street.

That was typical Fahim: whimsical, spontaneous, generous to a fault and giving.

“No one knows about his philanthropic activity.  Later, at different times, Fahim set up digital labs in many schools and orphanages, distributed hundreds of tabs for underprivileged children. He never let anyone know about these qualities.”

The office of HackHouse was established at Banani. It took more than a month to design its interiors with picturesque rustic looks.

When his team members asked him why he was sending so much on the office, he said that his purpose of coming to Bangladesh was not just to make money but to create a start-up culture here.

An uncle of Fahim, who wished to remain unnamed, had helped Fahim set up the HackHouse office.

“It was an election year and there was frequent violence in the country. His father was worried and would often call me from the US and ask me to take care of him,” the uncle told The Daily Star.

It was at this office in February 2015 that Saleh met with Hussain M Elius, a North South University alumnus, and Shifat Adnan, a graduate from Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET), and together they went on to found Pathao, Bangladesh’s first ride-hailing service.

“They came in the afternoon and stayed until 10-11 pm. There were long conversations and they were exchanging their ideas,” his uncle said.

Saleh, at first, wanted to start an e-commerce platform like eBay. But the biggest hurdle in doing so was the lack of logistics service. And so, the idea of Pathao came into being.

“So, Pathao was originally a courier company,” his uncle added.

In the meantime, HackHouse’s foray into the mobile gaming domain was struggling to take off in the way Saleh had hoped. And, serendipitously, Pathao provided him the outlet then to channel all his boundless energy and ideas.

At that time, word on the street was that global giant Uber and Indian Ola were planning to set foot in Bangladesh with their ride-hailing services. And Saleh wanted to have a head start over them and engineered Pathao’s pivot into the ride-hailing arena.

In the middle of 2016, a few months before Uber arrived, Pathao started its journey as a ride-hailing company but with motorcycles, a mode of vehicle that was not deployed by either of Uber or Ola then.

Saleh’s connections with the American tech industry brought big investments for Pathao as well as global exposure.

In 2019, Forbes valued Pathao at $100 million. Although Saleh liquidated some of his shares in Pathao, he still had a big stake at the time of his death.

THE GAME IS ON: ALPHA POTATO

Saleh’s indomitable belief in the potential of Bangladesh’s start-ups and its many talents can be gleaned from the tale of Md Masha Mustakim, founder of and chief executive officer of Alpha Potato, a Bangladesh-based game studio.

On 16 December 2015, PortBliss, a gaming company that Mustakim had co-founded, launched Heroes of 71, a mobile-based game upholding the country’s glorious Liberation War history.  The game had created quite the buzz among the youth. In three days, it was downloaded a whopping 300,000 times.

Overall, it had 7 million downloads and 300,000 average monthly active users.

Yet, it was not a profitable product for PortBliss.

So, for fresh funding, Mustakim and a few members of PortBliss met with Saleh in April 2016 at a restaurant in Gulshan.

“We were greeted by a young man from the US with sharp eyes and full of life,” Mustakim told The Daily Star.

The PortBliss team was downcast because despite the success the company was not able to turn in a profit.

“But, within 30 minutes of talking to Fahim, a ray of hope ignited on the faces of all of our members.”

On the spot, Saleh had worked out an astonishing valuation and growth forecasts for the venture. He also advised them on how to get further investment and how to register the company abroad.

“What touched me the most while talking with Fahim was his concern for how every one of PortBliss team members would get benefited and ensure everyone’s stake in the venture.”

Still, Portbliss failed to become a money-spinning venture. It eventually merged with Gameover Studio to become MindFisher Games.  MindFisher went on to develop ‘Mukti Camp’, one of the most ambitious mobile gaming projects in Bangladesh. But this project too did not find the financial success that the effort deserved.

“From 2016 to 2019, we have been unable to translate our efforts into revenue growth. But Fahim kept investing. He kept our morale afloat with his ever-cheering words.”

Saleh and Mustakim eventually folded the company and decided to shift focus from the Bangladesh market to the international market.

In early 2019, another gaming company was founded, backed by Saleh and a few other investors, called Alpha Potato with a single-minded focus on the international mobile gaming market.

With Saleh network, Alpha Potato was able to partner with Lion Studios, one of the top video game publishers in the US.

Alpha Potato found immense success in the hyper-casual genre in 2019 and since the founding of the company it has released two massive hits “i Peel Good” and “Icing On The Cake”. These games combined have crossed 95 million downloads worldwide.

On 15 September that year, i Peel Good, a game in which one just peels fruit, hit the top spot in iOS downloads.

There is no way to lose, and only one way to advance: by peeling fruit or a root vegetable. Once the skin is entirely off, a trivia on the fruit or vegetable flashes across the screen. The game struck a chord for its oddly simple and relaxing tempo.

“The money we lost in three years we made in just two months.”

Alpha Potato now is known worldwide among the mobile game publishers for popularising the trend of idle games genre.

“Now, it is a hugely profitable venture. We were supposed to sit with Fahim this year and discuss our future plans. But that is no longer possible,” said a palpably grief-stricken Mustakim over the phone.

JOBIKE FOUNDED IN A FLASH

Saleh’s HackHouse was involved in three other ventures: Jetechow, Jabe and Banaici.

Mehedi Reza was working with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s office in China in February 2018 when he had a brief chat with Saleh over the phone. Shameem Ahsan, chairman of the Venture Capital and Private Equity Association of Bangladesh, had introduced the two a year earlier.

During the ten-minute conversation, Reza shared his dream of founding a bicycle rental platform in Bangladesh. “Fahim straightaway told me to resign from the Alibaba Job.”

Within a few minutes of hanging up with Reza, and consistent with his instinctive nature, Saleh had wired the initial funding for the venture.

“He is not just an angel investor only; he is much more than that. Without him I would not have dared to launch Jobike,” said Reza, its founder and CEO.

On 18 June that year, Jobike launched in Cox’s Bazar as part of its plan to champion two-wheelers as one of the main modes of transport in the congested city.

And six months later, the bicycle rental company rolled out its service in Dhaka.

Currently, Jobike has footprints in Mirpur DOHS, Dhaka University, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Chittagong University, Cox’s Bazar with a fleet of more than 400 bicycles. It plans to expand to other areas in Dhaka and the other big cities of Bangladesh.

“Fahim bhai has so many crazy ideas and he liked to listen to all of our crazy ideas. It’s a deep loss to our start-up ecosystem in Bangladesh and the rest of the emerging market start-up scene.”

Reza last met Saleh in October last year, when he showed up at the Jobike office unannounced.

Both had on them sunglasses of the same brand and model, and Saleh mistakenly took away Reza’s shades.

“Later, I called him and said, ‘Man, you took my sunglasses, which is newer. I still have Fahim bhai’s sunglasses — it is now priceless.”

JATRI SHUTTLING DHAKA

In January 2019, Aziz Arman was working for another company when he met Saleh and discussed his vision for Jatri, a bus ticketing app.

Four days later, Saleh got the ball rolling on pre-seed funding for Jatri. Pre-seed funding is the small investment needed to get a business started.

With Saleh’s guidance, Arman formed the US holding company on 18 February 2019 and from 26 March it began providing services by partnering up with Trust Transport Services.

“We launched our tracking as a separate service as part of the journey planner in August after getting a good response from users and bus owners/authorities.”

By December 2019, Jatri had closed a round of seed funding, which is a private investment of capital in a start-up in exchange for equity.

Typically coming from friends and family, venture capital firms, angel investors or even through crowdfunding, seed capital is a very early investment meant to support the business until it can generate cash of its own, or until it is ready for further investments.

Jatri got seed money from Bolt, Super Angel, Falcon Network and other angels who were involved in building similar tech-based solutions.

Currently, Jatri covers 33 per cent of the major routes of Dhaka with prominent bus operators such as Gulshan Chaka, Trust Transport, Green Dhaka, Dhaka Chaka, Agrodut Bus Services, Osim Paribahan. It also provides corporate transport service.

Jatri, which has acquired another four major routes of Dhaka by partnering with reputed bus companies, provides journey planning, tracking, digital payment and ticketing (both online and offline).

“Fahim played a tremendous role in building Jatri. He guided the team with an active role. He truly believed in our vision and valiantly helped to accelerate Jatri’s progress to global standards. He was a visionary and an ingenious friend of ours,” Arman added.

KICKBACK APP

Saleh first proper foray in tech entrepreneurship was in 2009, soon after he graduated from Bentley University with a degree in computer science. He launched PrankDial, a prank-calling app that allows users to pay to send a pre-recorded call to a friend.

“The app launched within a few months to major success. People began making in-app purchases, and PrankDial was a top 10 iOS app at one point,” Saleh wrote in a Medium blogpost in 2018.

He had built the backend while a developer developed the iOS app.

“As our revenue climbed from $200,000 in 2010 to nearly $2 million in 2012, I was able to grow our team further and rent a real office. PrankDial.com is still up and running, generating between $1 and $2 million annually,” he added.

To date, it has made more than $10 million and makes about $600,000 a year, according to Hasan Rafi, the in-charge of Dhaka office of KickBack Apps, the holding company of PrankDial.

KickBack Apps, which has an office in the capital’s Mirpur DOHS since September 2018, develops apps for the American market.

And it was with the money generated by KickBack Apps that Saleh made all the investments in start-ups in the developing world.

To Rafi, Fahim was an inspirational character, who was always jolly and upbeat. And like the others before him, he too has an anecdote of Saleh extraordinary generosity.

“I was in San Francisco once and lost my bag that had all my money, passport and MacBook. Upon hearing this incident, Fahim straightaway sent me money and bought me a new MacBook and did not even ask me to pay back,” Rafi added.

And it is this generosity that unwittingly led to Saleh’s cruellest end at the hands of his personal assistant Tyrese Devon Haspil.

According to three officials briefed on the matter, Saleh had discovered that Haspil had stolen roughly $90,000 from him, reports The New York Times.

Though Saleh fired Haspil, he did not report the theft, the officials said. He even offered to arrange a way for his former employee to work off his debt in what amounted to a payment plan.

Investigators believe Haspil murdered Saleh rather than honour the deal, reports NY Post.

ADVENTURE CAPITAL SPAWNING START-UPS

In 2018, Saleh set up Adventure Capital, a unique mix of incubator and venture fund focused in potential emerging markets.

“He identified there was a lack of pre-seed and seed-stage investment gap in these regions,” said Mehidi Hasan Omi, an investment analyst at Adventure Capital and a close associate of Saleh.

Adventure Capital’s portfolio includes Picap and Muvo in Colombia; Gokada in Nigeria; Madlipz in Canada. He personally invested in a few more tech start-ups.

The firm provides extensive operational, technical and financial support to each of its portfolio companies, each of which is improving the lives of millions and generating jobs with more efficient markets through technology.

“His view of sustainable entrepreneurship and hands-on approach towards the founders was favoured by many. The founders would need extensive support to go along with the money. Thus, he made life a lot easier for the founders.”

Saleh’s views of the Bangladeshi ecosystem stayed strong until the end as he kept on investing and driving funding into the region, Omi said.

“Bangladesh has been one of his favoured regions of investment. He saw the immense potential in Bangladesh very early on and eventually came here intending to solve real problems,” he added.

The brutal killing of Fahim Saleh is not only an irreparable loss for Bangladesh but also for the rest of the world as he was solving problems across the continents, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for Information and Communications Technology, told The Daily Star last night.

His activities and dreams for his native country were playing an important role in the implementation of Digital Bangladesh, he said, while calling upon the youths of Bangladesh to follow in the footsteps of Saleh and take the country forward.

Palak also called on the US government to bring justice to Saleh’s brutal murder.