The country’s business process outsourcing industry gathered on Saturday at Sena Prangon in Dhaka for BPO Summit Bangladesh 2025, a two-day event organised by the Bangladesh Association of Contact Center and Outsourcing (BACCO) with the ICT Division and the Business Promotion Council. Industries adviser Adilur Rahman Khan opened it. The theme, “BPO 2.0: Revolution to Innovation”, is a polite way of naming the thing everyone in the hall was thinking about.
The AI question, put directly
Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, the chief adviser’s special assistant on ICT and telecoms, did not soften it. The technology sector had changed fundamentally since Covid, he said, and “the new reality is artificial intelligence. If BPO and other technology firms do not adopt AI, they will face new challenges.” It was a warning rather than a threat: an industry that sells human voices answering telephones is exactly the industry that AI agents are built to replace, and Bangladesh’s pitch of low-cost, English-capable staff is worth less each year that the machines get cheaper. His answer was skilled human resources and effective policy — the industry has to move up the value chain to the work that still needs people.
What the government promised
Adilur Rahman Khan framed BPO as part of a shift away from an economy built on agriculture and garments toward technology-based industry, and pointed to smart-city planning and IT park construction as the state’s contribution. BACCO president Tanvir Ibrahim said local firms were building capacity and creating jobs at the same time, and that the pace of technological change was itself creating openings. ICT Division director general Md Abu Sayeed and BACCO general secretary Faisal Alim also spoke; ICT secretary Shish Haider Chowdhury chaired.
On the floor
Thirty domestic and international IT and BPO companies exhibited, alongside seminars and workshops with foreign buyers and analysts. An experience zone showed augmented and virtual reality, drones, a submarine model and robots, mostly built by students. The most practical corner was the job fair, where companies collected CVs from young applicants in person — a reminder that, whatever the seminars say about AI, the industry still hires people, and that a summit in Dhaka is one of the few places a graduate from outside the capital can hand a résumé to ten firms in an afternoon. BTRC was strategic partner; the Bangladesh ICT Journalist Forum and Technology Media Guild Bangladesh supported the event. It runs through Sunday.
