I am a BBA student, can I get a job in the RMG industry? How much money do I need to start my own garments? Job or business? Find all these answers given by one of the most successful businessmen, Mohammed Abdur Rahim, Vice-chairman of the DBL group.
Q: We would like to start from the very beginning. Where were you born and brought up? And what was your academic background?
Mohammed Abdur Rahim: I was born in Dhaka – Farmgate, Tejgaon. I have been mostly in Dhaka throughout my whole academic life. I was a student of Govt. Science College. In between, I was in Barisal Residential Model School (Present Barisal Cadet College). I have completed my intermediate from Notre Dame College. After that, I got admitted to Physics at Jahangirnagar University for my honors degree. But the campus was far from my home and I couldn’t get any seat in the hall. After 3 weeks of the hectic journey on the bus, I got sick and it was impossible to continue my studies over there anymore. So, I got myself admitted into Govt. City College, Dhanmondi, and completed my B. Com. from there. Next, I completed my masters degree in management from Dhaka University. After being done with my studies, I took a job. My main goal behind this job was to acquire experience, and my mother also wanted to see me in the corporate sphere. Anyway, after leaving this job, I finally joined my family business in garments.
Q: Doing a job is about discipline – you have regular office from 9 to 5. On the contrary, doing a business is the opposite – there is no constrain regarding your work and schedule. So, how was your experience regarding this transition?
MAR: Well, definitely there is a huge difference between both of them. There is a discipline and specific job responsibility when you are working in the private sector. But when you are a business owner, you have to think about a lot of things. From businessmen to service holders – you have to interact with all types of people over there. This is certainly a huge experience in communicating with the mass people.
Q: There is a common perception among the people of our country that doing a job is more secure, while business is more risky. As you have experience in both of these fields, what is your opinion in this matter – should the young go for jobs? Or should they start their own business?
MAR: According to our beloved Prophet (PBUH), doing business is the best way of acquiring the rizq of Allah. Yes, you can definitely do jobs. But if you have any scope of halal business, you should go for it. For the young generation, I would like to say that, everybody is not suitable to do business. In the same way, everybody is not fit for a job. But there is a balance between both. In my opinion, having some job experience prior to starting your business is really necessary. Because you are all in all in your own business. But in a job, there is a matter of accountability and answerability. This helps to build a sense of discipline, decision making, chain of command, and a lot of other necessary things. Even in our family business, there is a family corporate constitution. That constitution states that, if any of our upcoming generations wants to join the family business, he or she needs to have minimum of 4 years of experience in an MNC or any other good sector after academic studies.
So, for the young generation, my advice would be – after being done with your studies, gather some job experience. Then if you are confident enough about doing something on your own, go for it.
Q: Nowadays the RMG sector has been considered as the most potential sector for business in Bangladesh. So, after being done with the BBA, many young people grow interest in starting business in this sector. How do you see this? How authentic is the fact and how is the scope and opportunity of business in this particular sector?
MAR: At first, to start a business in garments or textile, you do not need to be a BBA or MBA graduate. According to my opinion, you should pursue your study in the subject that you find interest in. If you want to do business, there are a lot of short courses over here and abroad. You can acquire practical education and business maturity.
Now if you want to know about the opportunity in the RMG sector, I would say that things are not like it was 20 or 25 years ago. After the recent incidents of Rana Plaza and Tazreen fashion, the authority has been very careful regarding the overall quality and safety of this sector. Organizations like Accord, Alliance and other international organizations are monitoring the garments very closely. Now you just can’t put up some machinery in a residence building and set up a garments factory-like people used to do before. We used to see a lot of buildings in Uttara, Mirpur or Rampura areas where the bottom few floors were used for market or banks and the top floors were garments. Now the monitoring organizations do not allow any garments in these shared buildings. And all the existing garments in the shared buildings are being closed. You can see in the news media that a lot of factories have been closed and 60 to 70 factories are about to be closed. So, now you can’t just put up a factory anywhere and somehow bring some order and can’t export to earn some quick money anymore. To start a factory, now you need 100% compliance. You need to go by the code of conduct and buyers’ instructions very strictly. You also need to consider the building code and many other regulations. All of these require a big amount of investment. For example, big companies like ours, who have been in the business for like 25 years, currently need to invest around 9 to 10 crore taka for the necessary rectification. And we need to make this huge investment just to modify our existing facilities according to the regulations. Now, a student can never start a business with a funding of 100 or 200 crore taka. So my opinion to any person willing to start a business is, before starting any business, do proper research regarding the sector and gain sufficient knowledge. Identify the challenges and plan your way through. And after that, if you are confident enough, then go for it. So, there is no shortcut. And also, you can’t think that you will eventually grow by starting with a small amount of investment – nowadays business does not work that way.
Q: There is a debate regarding the labor wages. Some people say that, the wages they get are not sufficient. Others say that, they lack experience and they need extensive training, so the wages they get is proper. How do you see this matter? What is the reason behind this debate? Any why does this problem occur?
MAR: There was a time 5 or 6 years earlier, when there were big companies who were self-sufficient and didn’t rely on any buying house and sub-contract. You would never get any complain regarding salary and wages. You would have got the complains from the C-category companies. They couldn’t get any direct order from abroad and had to rely on sub-contracts. They didn’t go by any compliance so, had no headache regarding proper wages. But things have changed. Now the workers are more aware of their rights. In addition, the Labor Ministry and other bodies of government are observing the factories very closely. BGMEA has a cell dedicated to this issue. They get all the reports from SB and NSI. They have a committee that consists of members from the Labor Ministry, SB and other government bodies. They determine if any chaos or problem is imminent in any factory. They also look for the cause of the disorder – if it’s regarding salary or work environment. In a nutshell, there is no scope for the owners to deprive the workers of their expected salary. Now everyone is knowledgeable and government is also supervising everything very closely.
Q: These days, the number of students studying in the textile department is on the rise. We now have a textile university and many other private universities have started offering degrees in this discipline. According to you, what is the potential of the textile students? How will they be benefited in the job market?
MAR: We definitely need textile graduates in our industry. Whenever we post any job advertisement online or in print media, we specify that the applicant who is a textile graduate will be prioritized. And I see that if a student graduates from this discipline with a good result, he or she gets recruited very quickly. They have a pretty good scope of work. I also see that the students are getting their MBA degrees as soon as they complete their graduation from textile. This definitely adds value to their career. They are adding value to the company they work for as well.
Q: The number of universities offering degrees in textile in respect to the size of the industry is still very low. So, do you face any problem regarding the scarcity of manpower? What about other challenges?
MAR: Well, the students who are graduating from different universities are very skilled. Plus if we look at the growth of this sector for the last 10 years, we can see that there has been a major increase in investment. I would say that there is almost no scarcity of manpower at all. Almost all the graduates are being absorbed by the industry and it fulfills the industry’s current needs. The textile university established by BGMEA is much enriched. They have specialized departments from merchandising to knitting and dyeing – all tailored for the textile sector. Naturally, we are getting good quality students from there. Now one can say that, due to the recent regulations, a lot of factories are already closed and a lot of others are about to get closed. So now what will happen? The answer is, at the same time, the strong companies are expanding. Firstly, because of the increase in availability of orders. Secondly, the price has dropped. In recent times, price in America has dropped by almost 1.2% and in Europe, the price has been slashed by close to 2% but the price of the raw materials and power has increased by 30%. In this situation, expansion is the only way to survive. Earlier, we made a profit of 5% to 7% which has now become 1% to 2%. Our productivity is less by 30% than Vietnam. For that reason each year they have 25% to 30% growth. Moreover, you can definitely see how much the prices of power and gas have increased. At the same time, we can’t get an uninterrupted supply of power and gas. Actually, we are facing so many challenges.
Q: Do BBA graduates have the opportunity to work in the garments sector?
MAR: Why not? If I consider my DBL group, there is no distinction between BBA and MBA graduates. We always evaluate your talent. If you have enough courage to accept challenges and if you cultivate honesty and sincerity you can join over here. Over here, it’s not like all of the people are BBA or MBA graduates, or textile engineers. I have people from chemistry, statistics and even people who have completed honors in English. We try to appoint smart, intelligent and educated people.
Q: It is a very big industry that you are running. In this case, do you ever have to be in any dilemma regarding self-ethics or religious ethics?
MAR: Well, you know it pretty well that there are a lot of unethical operations in every sector of our country. But we made conscious effort to be ethical right from the day one. We feel that, it’s more important to have the blessings of Allah rather than expanding the business by any unethical means. As long as you have ethical practice, your growth might be slow, but it will be sustainable. You might acquire huge growth by the means of unethical practices, but all of that will not withstand in the long run. That’s why we are very strict on our moral practices.
Q: As the last question, I would like to ask, where do you want to see DBL group after 10 years? What will be its overall contribution to the society?
MAR: Definitely, we are on a roadmap – vision 2021. We are going to arrange a program regarding that roadmap in March 2016. You can’t speculate on such a big company just like that. Currently, we have 22 thousand members in our team. We hope that it will increase to 40 thousand by 2017 in sha Allah. We are doing the necessary expansion for that. We are also thinking of investing abroad. We are starting by investing in one place currently. But we are looking for opportunities to increase this number. But our main priority is growing inside our country. Increasing our team members is part of that plan. Within the next two years, our investment should be around 400 million dollars. Already the project that we are planning to initiate abroad is close to 100 million dollars. It will be completed within maximum of two years. Definitely, we want to make a major contribution to the GDP of Bangladesh so that the DBL group carries a significant percentage. We always have had a preference for our local community. We obviously have a responsibility towards the area where our factories are situated. And we have been full filing this responsibility for the last 14 to 15 years. Our future projects will also bear this preference. We also trust in diversification. You might know that we already took the franchise of a team in BPL. It gives us local and international exposure and at the same time gives us an opportunity to engage with the community.
