About
JM Akbar is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of BJIT Group, a Bangladesh-Japan IT company he co-founded in 2001 with just 10 engineers. BJIT now runs eight global...
About JM Akbar
JM Akbar is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of BJIT Group, an offshore software development company that has spent more than two decades building one of Bangladesh's strongest business relationships with the Japanese IT industry. What started as a ten-person team has grown into a company with operations across eight countries.
Starting BJIT With 10 Engineers
Akbar co-founded BJIT Group on July 1, 2001, in Dhaka, alongside Kover Michael John. The company began with a team of just ten engineers, a modest start for what would eventually become a multi-country IT group.
There was no existing playbook for a Bangladeshi software company to follow at the time, particularly not one aiming at the Japanese market.
Building a Bridge to Japan
BJIT became one of the pioneers in creating a business liaison between the Bangladeshi and Japanese IT industries. When BJIT first entered the Japanese market, no other Bangladeshi IT companies had a meaningful presence there.
BJIT Inc was later founded in Japan as a group company, formalizing what began as an early, largely unprecedented cross-border relationship into a structured joint venture between Japanese and Bangladeshi entities.
Growing Into Eight Countries
Under Akbar's leadership, BJIT Group has grown to more than 750 skilled engineers operating out of eight global offices, spanning Japan, the United States, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand, and Bangladesh.
That geographic spread is unusual for a Bangladeshi-founded IT company, and it reflects the international relationships Akbar built from the company's earliest years rather than a later expansion strategy layered on top of a domestic business.
A Silver Jubilee
BJIT Group marked its Silver Jubilee in 2025 and 2026, 25 years since its founding in 2001. For a company built around long-term client relationships in offshore software development, that milestone is as much a signal to clients as it is an internal celebration.
Recognition at Home
Akbar has been recognized by the Government of Bangladesh with Commercially Important Person (CIP) status, an honor given to individuals judged to have made a significant contribution to the country's trade and industry.
For a company that built its identity around a market most Bangladeshi software companies never seriously entered, that recognition underlines how unusual BJIT's specific path through the industry has been.