IFS in Bangladesh

IFS AB - The Global Enterprise Applications Company started its South Asia regional operations headquartered from Colombo in 2002 and since then has expanded its presence from Sri Lanka to Pakistan and Bangladesh. IFS is also looking at Maldives and Nepal in the near future.

In a recent interview, Country Director for Bangladesh, Asanga Marasinghe and Sales and Marketing Director for South Asia, Shiraz Lye said that they are further expanding the operations and increasing the presence in Bangladesh in terms of business and consultancy.

"IFS's presence in Bangladesh began in 2005 with the Singer Bangladesh - one of the largest web-based ERP implementation projects in the region, which was implemented primarily by Sri Lankan consultants and software engineers.

Due to the scale of the project and particularly due to the immense potential and growth of Bangladesh economy, we appointed a local company in the country to serve as our marketing, implementation and support services Business Partner (BP). The BP also helped us with several other new implementations in Bangladesh such as Bombay Sweets Ltd and Lal Teer Seed Ltd. A few years down the line, however, we realized that to serve and grow more, IFS needs to have a direct presence in Bangladesh," said Marasinghe, who is also the Director Software Development & Technical Services at IFS.

He said that in late 2011, in view of increasing IFS's presence and capitalisation in South Asia, IFS chose Bangladesh as one of its direct presence zones. As a result, IFS established its own operations in Dhaka in Q1 2012.

The main objective during the initial phase was to ensure a smooth transition of projects of customers from BP to IFS. With the new set up in the country and more focus, IFS managed to win contracts with Apex Adelchi Footwear Ltd and the leading footwear manufacturer in Bangladesh and Rangs Limited-the distributor for Mitsubishi automobiles in Bangladesh to implement IFS Applications(tm).