I was born in Dhaka and started working at fifteen.
In 2013 I co-founded a company from a living room in Lalmatia. It grew to about eighty people. Twice it nearly ran out of cash, and both times we came through without letting anyone go. Those years taught me the two things I still care most about: cash and people.
In 2021 I left for Wharton. It gave me the words for what those years had taught me, and friends I still lean on. I interned at Stripe, finished the MBA in 2023, and stayed in America to work, most recently at a Kleiner Perkins-backed company in Silicon Valley. The work was good, and so was the life.
In 2025 I moved back.
When I started out I had no credit and no access, so I know how much good work here goes unseen. Bangladesh has thousands of good businesses, built over ten and twenty years by owners who never had anyone beside them. I want to spend my working life next to them. I have less comfort now and more freedom, and I would make the same trade again.
Luminthir is what I am building. We build and operate consumer businesses in Bangladesh, and we are built to hold them for decades. What we do is narrow by design, and most of it is better explained in a conversation than on a page.
If you grew up here, or your parents did, and you have wondered what your part in this country could be, I would like to hear from you.
And if we know each other from Wharton, or from my years in America, this is what I left to do. Write to me, or better, come and see it.
Ovick AlamFounder and Managing Partner