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Nobuhiro Hotta is an IT entrepreneur. A residence of Japan, Nobuhiro Hotta is the founder and owner of Dream Cluster Inc, a group of companies consisting of nine companies. Recently, Nobuhiro Hotta came to Bangladesh to participate in BASIS SOFT EXPO 2008. Japan is a developed country with a thriving IT sector. Many Japanese IT companies are now looking forward to outsource their operations in other countries. As a representative of Japanese IT companies, he came to collect detail information about Bangladeshi IT sector. In an interview with Business Bangladesh Updates, Nobutada shared his thoughts and ideas.


Here is the interview:

Tell us about your company.

I am the founder of Dream Cluster Inc. It is a group of companies consisting of nine companies. Out of these nine companies four have come to Bangladesh to participate in BASIS SOFT EXPO 2008. The main target of this mission is e JOBGO, a portal site. Currently, there are 20,000 software industries in Japan. Out of these companies five and half thousand companies are members of this website. This website is dedicated to bring together companies that are involved in the same business operations and increase their network. As a representative of these companies, I have come to Bangladesh to gain insight about the IT companies of Bangladesh.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

After finishing my study, I started my career in a software company named System Integration. I used to work as an engineer in the salary department. After the company was converted into a public limited company, I supervised the planning of the IT section of the company. While working there I used to deal with other IT companies. I learned about human networking. A major problem with Japanese IT companies is that they do not have a very good communication system. Big companies only go to other big companies. They do not look for small companies. With a view to break this communication barrier and increase the networking between the IT companies, I established e JOBGO four years ago. Within this short time, the website observed a huge influx of IT companies. Similar problem is arising in China. In China, there are many IT companies of various sizes and to build up a network among these countries they require this type of web portal.

Earlier, you said that four of your companies have come to Bangladesh. Would you tell us about these companies?

Yes. The four companies are: e JOBGO, Sonic Blaster Inc, Zealous Adjuster, and Space Minister Inc. I have already told you about e JOBGO. Sonic Blaster Inc. works on developing network infrastructure. It develops softwares that monitor computer networks. Zealous Adjuster Inc. is a website developing company. They have developed a software named Web Smarty. Using this software, people can easily build and design website homepages. To develop this software, we use Movable Type, an American software. Space Minister Inc. is a real-estate search portal containing information about house renting, apartment renting/buying, lands etc. People in Japan search website to look for apartments. Our goal is to develop a real-estate search portal for Bangladesh. After developing it, the portal will be maintained by Bangladeshi IT workers.

What do you think about BASIS SOFT EXPO 2008?

I am very much surprised to see so many Bangladeshi IT companies participating in this event. Today, I met with officials of almost forty Bangladeshi IT organizations and all of them showed great interest to work with us. Currently, the lion’s share of the Japanese off-shore outsourcing goes to China. There are large number of Chinese software engineers knows Japanese language. Because of this rise in the demand, service charge of the Chinese Software Companies is going upwards. To fight with this problem, we are looking into developing countries with sufficient IT infrastructure such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, countries that would provide us quality service at a lower price. We are currently researching the market of these countries.

At present, Bangladeshi IT engineers are now working for many reputed American and European Software companies. There are many talented software engineers and developers. So, we think there is a very good possibility that we could do business in this country. The main problem is communication. So far, language seems to be the biggest obstacle for us. Almost all the Japanese people do not speak English and none of the Bangladeshis know Japanese. Japanese officials submit their documents in Japanese. They expect the service providers to know Japanese language. Since, Bangladeshi people are skilled in English, they can work and communicate very well with American and European companies.

In this regard, Vietnam has a big advantage over Bangladesh. Vietnamese people are very much interested to learn Japanese language. Vietnamese government made it compulsory that university students study Japanese language along with their studies. As a result, there are large number of IT engineers who understand Japanese language very well. Thus, many Japanese companies are expanding their businesses in Vietnam.

You are interested in IT outsourcing. What type of works you are interested to outsource to Bangladesh?

Based on, whatever we have found out within this limited time, we want to outsource open source software related works to Bangladesh. We believe that Bangladeshi engineers are very skilled in open source software. Many Bangladeshi IT companies are working with American and European organizations and proved that they are very good in open source software. We are planning to outsource these types of works. The main problem is language.

What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of our IT sector?

This is my first time in Bangladesh. So far, I have not worked with any Bangladeshi companies and there are not too many Japanese companies that worked with Bangladesh. At this stage, it is a bit difficult for me to comment on this subject but whatever I have seen I am very hopeful about Bangladeshi IT sector. Bangladeshi IT workers are skilled, highly motivated and quick learners. If the language barrier could be overcome then it will ease up the tension. Whenever, I told the officials from Bangladeshi IT companies that their employees have to learn Japanese language they became worried a little bit. If Bangladeshi IT workers are serious and dedicated then they could overcome this barrier.

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