M. Mahboob Zaman

About M. Mahboob Zaman

M. Mahboob Zaman is the Founder and Managing Director of DataSoft Systems Bangladesh Ltd., one of the country's earliest enterprise software companies and among the first in Bangladesh to reach CMMI Level 5 certification.

His career spans from the battlefield of Bangladesh's 1971 Liberation War to building software used in national banking and port logistics systems decades later.

A Freedom Fighter Turned Entrepreneur

Before he built a software company, Zaman fought as a freedom fighter during Bangladesh's 1971 Liberation War.

That earlier chapter of his life isn't something typically associated with enterprise IT founders, but it's part of how he's publicly recognized in Bangladesh, as someone who was present at the country's founding before helping build one of its founding software companies decades later.

Founding DataSoft in 1998

Zaman founded DataSoft Systems Bangladesh in 1998, at a time when computer use in the country was still in its early stages and software exports were barely an industry.

He started the company with only Tk 10 lakh in paid-up capital, a modest sum even by the standards of the time, and built it into a company handling large-scale, mission-critical systems for banks, ports, and government-linked institutions. As The Daily Star has described, that early capital discipline shaped the cautious, deliberate way DataSoft grew in its first years.

Specializing in Complex, Regulated Systems

Rather than chase consumer software or short-term contract work, Zaman steered DataSoft toward complex, regulated sectors: port and logistics management, banking and microfinance systems, and bioinformatics.

That focus meant slower, harder sales cycles than building apps for a mass market, but it also meant DataSoft built deep, defensible expertise in systems that few local competitors could easily replicate.

Reaching CMMI Level 5

Under Zaman's leadership, DataSoft became CMMI Level 5 certified, the highest tier of the Capability Maturity Model Integration framework used to assess software development process quality.

That certification helped the company win joint venture contracts with partners in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Japan, and Italy, markets that typically demand process rigor before handing over critical systems work to an outside vendor.

Expanding Into Hardware with DMA

In 2017, nearly two decades after founding DataSoft, Zaman launched DMA, DataSoft Manufacturing & Assembly, extending the group's work from pure software into hardware manufacturing and assembly.

It was a deliberate broadening of what had started as a software-only business, reflecting Zaman's longer-term view of where Bangladesh's technology sector was heading.

A Voice for the Industry

Zaman has also served as a former president of BASIS, giving him a role in shaping Bangladesh's broader software policy conversations, not just running his own company.

He's spoken publicly about the shift toward machine-to-machine interaction in everyday technology, using the example of a mobile phone communicating directly with an air conditioner, a small illustration of how far the industry has moved since he started DataSoft with a paid-up capital of Tk 10 lakh in 1998.