Shikho

About Shikho

Shikho is a digital learning platform built to expand access to quality education across Bangladesh, designed around what its founder has described as a hyper-localized learning ecosystem for a population of roughly 85 million learning-age people. Shahir Chowdhury co-founded the company in 2019 alongside Zeeshan Zakaria, coming to education technology after a sixteen-year career in UK financial services rather than a background in teaching or software.

The company has drawn significant international capital to fund that mission, an unusual position for a Bangladeshi edtech startup at a similar stage.

Sixteen Years in London Finance

Shahir Chowdhury grew up in Dhaka before moving to the United Kingdom in 2005 to study Business Management at Cardiff University, graduating in 2009. He spent the following sixteen years in UK financial services, starting his career at Barclays in London across roles in Financial Planning and Strategy, Treasury Advisory, and Investment Management.

He later moved to HSBC, where he served as a Director in the bank's UK Private Bank division, and earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation from the CFA Institute in October 2014. That combination of retail banking, treasury, and private wealth experience gave him a very different professional grounding than most Bangladeshi edtech founders, most of whom come directly from technology or teaching backgrounds rather than global finance.

Returning to Build Shikho

In 2019, Shahir Chowdhury co-founded Shikho alongside Zeeshan Zakaria, choosing to leave a well-established UK finance career to build an education company in Bangladesh. The company set out to build what Shahir Chowdhury has described as a hyper-localized digital learning ecosystem, aimed at a learning-age population of roughly 85 million people.

That framing, treating education access as a problem of scale rather than a niche tutoring product, shaped Shikho's approach to content and pricing from the start, positioning the company to serve a mass-market audience rather than a premium segment alone.

Raising International Capital

Under Shahir Chowdhury's leadership, Shikho has raised $8 million in funding from investors including Sturgeon Capital, SAJIDA Foundation, and Goodwater Capital. That international backing gave the company runway to build out its content library and platform infrastructure well beyond what a bootstrapped Bangladeshi edtech company would typically have access to.

In 2022, Shikho was featured on the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list, recognition that came roughly three years after the company's founding and reflected the scale of ambition behind its localized content strategy.

Recognition for Equitable Education

In 2023, Shahir Chowdhury was selected as a Bloomberg Catalyst for his work promoting equitable access to education in Bangladesh. That recognition placed him among a small group of global entrepreneurs recognized specifically for work at the intersection of technology and education access, rather than pure business growth metrics.

That distinction added to a growing list of international recognition for Shikho, following closely behind its 2022 Forbes Asia listing and reinforcing the company's positioning as a mission-driven platform rather than a purely commercial one competing solely on content volume.

Where Shikho Stands Today

Shahir Chowdhury continues to lead Shikho's expansion, applying the operational discipline of a sixteen-year finance career to scaling an education platform across one of the world's largest learning-age populations. Employee reviews point to a notably stronger experience among Dhaka-based staff compared to the company's broader international workforce, a gap worth noting given Shikho's multi-office structure.

Running offices across Dhaka, Jessore, and international locations has given Shikho a more distributed operating footprint than most Bangladeshi edtech competitors, a structure that reflects its ambition to serve students well beyond the capital city alone, into towns and districts where digital learning infrastructure remains far less developed.

Products

Shikho's platform centers on localized digital learning content rather than a single course offering.

Live Interactive Classes connect students with expert tutors in real time, a core part of Shikho's learning experience.

Animated Video Lessons provide original, localized content designed around Bangladesh's curriculum and learning needs.

Performance Tracking and Recommendations round out the platform, using a recommendation engine to personalize each student's learning path based on real-time results.

Across live classes, video lessons, and personalized performance tracking, Shikho's platform reflects the hyper-localized, mass-market strategy that has defined the company since its 2019 founding, now operating from offices across Dhaka and Jessore.