Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is a megacity that has one of the world’s highest population densities. The streets are always jam-packed with vehicles: cars, motorcycles, overcrowded buses, and rickshaws with colorfully decorated hoods. The incessant blare of vehicle horns lingers until late at night.

With a population of 170 million, the average age of which is 27.6, Bangladesh has developed primarily through exporting textiles, which gives the country the nickname “the world’s sewing factory.” This may change, however, as information technology is seen as a new engine for growth. Since 2008, when the government declared “Digital Bangladesh” as its vision for the future, many universities have created faculties of computer science; recently, these have been producing about 20,000 IT engineers each year.

By utilizing this abundant resource, Marubeni expects that it will be able to provide support to businesses around the globe that are grappling with a serious shortage of engineers amid rapidly growing IT demand, and that it will also be able to contribute to a digitally driven societal transformation. In April 2023, Marubeni formed a business and capital alliance with BJIT Ltd. (hereinafter “BJIT”), a leading IT company in Bangladesh. For Marubeni, this also marked the launch of its new business: offshore DX services. Marubeni aims to provide IT solutions from overseas (offshore) to businesses that are struggling with DX.

When asked about the reason behind Marubeni’s decision to invest in BJIT, Maki Dan, who was seconded from Marubeni’s Next Generation Business Development Division and is currently serving as director and Chief Revenue Officer at BJIT, explained, “Bangladesh’s IT industry is not fully developed yet, and BJIT is not among the world’s top technology companies either, but in long-term prospects, we felt that the company has the potential to grow tremendously in 10 to 20 years’ time.” Dan says he can sense a thirst for learning and growth among BJIT’s engineers, most of whom are in their twenties: “With the sum of these aspirations and efforts, I think that BJIT will have transformed itself into a greater company 10 years from now.”

In 2014, BJIT founded BJIT Academy Ltd., an educational institution that trains IT engineers. In the Academy’s regular training program, which typically lasts four months, trainees are expected to acquire not only technical skills needed to perform tasks in the real world, but also soft skills including interpersonal communication. About half of those who complete the program will land a job at BJIT, but getting into the academy itself is highly competitive. The number of applicants is at least 100 times greater than the number of slots available in each program session. Md. Rashedul Islam was one of the applicants who made it over this difficult hurdle, and he joined BJIT in April 2025 upon the completion of a training program at the academy. “I wanted to be a real software engineer, and I chose BJIT so that I could fulfill my dream,” he says.

Enisha Ashrefa has been working in the software quality assurance division since she joined the company in January 2024. She says one of the things that makes BJIT an attractive place to work is that the company provides equal opportunities to all. “I can showcase my skillsets in the same way as my male colleagues do,” Ashrefa says. In fact, BJIT has the largest number of female employees among IT companies in Bangladesh, and it received an award in 2022 by the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services for this achievement.

Bangladesh has started to attract global attention as a new hub for offshore development because of its large pool of IT engineers who speak fluent, easy-to-understand English, as well as its price competitiveness, which allows international companies to outsource at significantly lower costs than India, Vietnam, or China. “Primarily among large western companies, the scramble has already begun to secure talented IT engineers,” says Yuji Ando, who was leading Japan External Trade Organization’s Dhaka office until the end of June 2025.

Nevertheless, what gives BJIT its most remarkable competitive edge is not its prices, but the quality of the services it has to offer. “Working with Japanese clients for 24 years has allowed us to learn and maintain the Japanese quality standard, which is number one in the world,” says Chief Strategy Officer Raisa Tahsin, who leads business development and human resources. “Quality is achievable when our engineers are talented and capable of developing and delivering all the services. We invest heavily in them, and that provides us with a good return.”

Introduced to BJIT by Marubeni, ZENRIN Co., Ltd., a map data provider, asked BJIT to develop an application in November 2023. ZENRIN had worked with offshore developers in other countries, but since it was its first time working with a Bangladeshi company, ZENRIN defined this project as a “trial,” asking BJIT to develop a new web app intended to replace the one that had been used internally for map making. “Embedding maps into software is a specialized task, so it is difficult to develop an app that requires this. It usually takes a while before a project gets started,” says Yusuke Soejima, general manager of ZENRIN’s Service Development 1. “But BJIT was able to create a prototype very quickly even though we didn’t provide detailed specifications. We were very impressed by that,” Soejima says. He adds that BJIT’s engineers went so far as to propose changes to some features of the app, bringing in fresh ideas that were different from those of the map experts. Soejima points out that this was also a testimony to BJIT’s high performance, which was beyond what was expected. The success of this project resulted in new assignments that followed, and the two companies continue to work together.

BJIT Inc., BJIT’s sales office in Japan, has more than 30 engineers, most of whom come from Bangladesh. Since they function like a bridge between customers in Japan and engineers in Dhaka, these so-called “bridge engineers” are expected to have excellent communication skills in addition to IT expertise and industry experience. Securing professionals with these skillsets has been challenging, but “After Marubeni’s decision to invest in BJIT was announced, the number of applicants who are interested in joining our company has dramatically increased,” says Masaki Horikawa, CEO of BJIT Inc. “Thanks to Marubeni’s extensive customer base and outstanding sales capabilities, we have been able to seize new business opportunities that we could never have gotten on our own. All of them are now blooming.” Horikawa also says he is hopeful that through collaboration with Marubeni, BJIT. will continue to expand its business with Japanese companies that operate globally.