About Us
Aktiful (একটিফুল) connects qualified Bangladeshi Americans to transformative opportunities in building a brighter Bangladesh. Rooted in Dr. Yunus's "Social Business" vision with a Y Combinator twist, we create positive narratives, support aspiring entrepreneurs with technology and funding, and offer mentorship inspired by Y Combinator's model.
On August 5th, Bangladesh became indepedent again. This time not from a foreign enemy. The student-led revolution successfully overthrew a fiften year dictatorship that caused unimaginable atrocities and used all nation-grade tools in its power to supress the truth for fiftheen years.
None of us in our wildest dream imagined that the young, unarmed students will ever be able to overthrow such a deeply rooted corrupt regime in just a few weeks of protest. Unfortunately, the price of the new found indepdence was equally great - thousands students and general public gave their lives for this new reality.
Many of us in the US have been on the side lines for too long. We were simply well fed and didn't have any hunger left in us to fight anything so far away from our adopted home abroad. But this movement hit us all hard – we saw massive rifts in our local Bangladeshi communities. We realized the true color of many people who put their party over their country or people. We just couldn't not remain in the sidelines anymore. We decided to work towards positive results and build better Bangladesh with what we have and what we know. We choose Dr. Yunus's Social Business model as we also do not believe non-profits that are operated mostly with donations can be scalable without being hostage to doners and fund matching corporate policies. So we decided to take the bold step to build a social enterprise that will cap profit and build social goods and deliver social values at paces that are scalable and realistic. We are working towards this goal and hope to achive a great milestone in 2025.
