At LightCastle Partners, Sazzad brings along a broad spectrum of experience. In his short but eventful career, Sazzad has worked in three distinctly different roles – a Management Trainee in Retail Financing, a Trade Marketer cum a Distribution Manager in Tobacco Industry, and a Lecturer in Management Studies. In all the roles, he has performed exceptionally well and demonstrated an ability to excel under trying circumstances. Sazzad started his career as an intern at HSBC. Upon completion, he joined another international organization – IPDC of Bangladesh Ltd. as a Management Trainee. At IPDC, he worked closely with the R&D team to develop new financial products and review performance of existing ones, and coordinated key accounts and branch activities. He joined British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) as an Assistant Territory Officer in 2010. Developing product reinforcement campaigns and launching new brands, Sazzad helped modify BATB’s distribution structure to increase efficiency that eventually led to the capture of a greater market share. In 2012, he joined Heriot-Watt University, UK, as a lecturer in its distant learning program where he taught courses on International Strategic Management and Introduction to Business. Sazzad holds a bachelor’s in Accounting and Information Systems from University of Dhaka and is currently enrolled in MSc Marketing in the University of Manchester, UK. He is takes an active interest in travelling, European football, and religion.

Specialized in business model development, financial structuring and inclusive business design with 10+ years of experience in investment banking, private, development and public sector consulting. Co-founder and CEO of LightCastle, one of the country’s fastest growing consulting firm with 100+ projects in 3 years and social ventures like www.pujeebd.org, www.unnoty.org and www.thepitchperfect.com. He started his career with Citi N.A. as a Management Associate (MA) and has since then worked in a variety of episodic deals including Bangladesh's first Interest Rate Swap, Equity Convertible Bonds, Largest IPO, Microfinance Securitization and Block Equity Trades. After graduating from the MA program, Bijon's chief responsibility revolved around leading the strategy planning and analysis unit. Working with regional teams across Singapore, Hong Kong, and India, he played a major role in aligning Bangladesh as an important piece in Citi's growth strategy in Asia. Due to outstanding performance, Bijon had received the CEO Excellence Awards for two years in a row in the organization. Bijon holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka and an Executive MBA from the same institute. He spends his leisure time by watching anime and reading.

Ivdad Ahmed Khan Mojlish is a Co-founder and the Managing Director of LightCastle Partners. His passion for a data-driven economy led him to establish LCP as a premier consulting firm in Bangladesh. Working at the intersection of data, analytics and development over the past 4 years, he has helped develop 100+ impact stories by enabling 70+ organizations – spanning private, public and development – become comfortable with data-driven decision making.

A collaborator at heart, Ivdad is a big believer in the notion that collaboration > competition. He feels most comfortable playing the role of another cog in the wheel. He enjoys business development, communication design and product management. In the current role, he has been instrumental in overseeing the growth of the organization. In addition to his major roles at LCP, Ivdad also consults for clients in areas of digital research, ICT in agriculture, WASH and capacity building.

Ivdad’s background revolve around start-ups, social enterprises and leadership training. Before LCP, he served as the Program Director at BYLC for three years. For his commitment to youth leadership development, Ivdad was awarded ‘Youth of the Nation’ by JAAGO Foundation in 2011 and selected by the U.S. Embassy, Dhaka, for the International Visitor Leadership Program for Non-Profit Management in the U.S. in 2010.

Ivdad has an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, U.S.A. and holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) at the University of Dhaka. While doing his MBA, he spent his summer working between Microsoft and Venture Hive developing strategy and execution plan for the first ever Microsoft Innovation Center in Miami, Florida. He has also consulted for Awethu – one of the largest social entrepreneurship incubators in South Africa – building bridges between social entrepreneurs and science institutes for commercial application of modern scientific products in the context of African economy.

As an entrepreneur, Ivdad loves to dream big, work more, and talk less. He believes his ambition will drive his ability. Winning small, aiming tall and constantly having a ball is his mantra in life. One can’t keep him away from reading and traveling in his leisure time.

Entrepreneur, market analyst and sustainable business consultant, with almost a decade of experience in banking, non-profit, entrepreneurship, market research and private & development sector consulting. Passionate about entrepreneurship, startup and tech based initiatives, content marketing and consulting. Co-founded a Data analytics & Consulting firm (LightCastle Partners) and consumer/market research based online platform (LightCastle Data). Also, conceptualized and rolled-out a social initiative (Pujee), an online based early stage financial preparing platform for upcoming entrepreneurs.

Leading team for delivering data driven solutions for clients in private, development and public sectors. Using cross functional expertise, have successfully migrated private sector best practices for contributing to sustainable business models in development interventions. Worked with top development sector clients, including but not limited to – IDE, CARE, Katalyst, SNV, Ashoka, WaterAid, Ricardo, GIZ, Habitat 4 Humanity and Traidcraft. Alongside, has led projects for top private sector clients, including- Robi, PRAN-RFL, ACI, Olympic and Ak Khan Group.

Previously worked in HSBC’s commercial banking department, specializing in relationship management and risk analytics. As an Assistant Relationship Manager, managed a portfolio of 15 corporate clients with total banking portfolio of USD120M. As credit analyst, successfully tracked a number of high growth sectors, including- apparel, Steel, cement, commodity and plastic.

Over the years, Zahed has accumulated significant market expertise in apparel, power, cement, Steel, agriculture, plastic and WASH sectors. Other functional expertise include:

Market Analysis and Research

Data analysis and Market mapping

Value Chain analysis

Financial Analysis & modeling

Content Marketing

Graduated from Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka completing both BBA and EMBA degrees from the same institute. He’s also an International Visitors' Leadership Program (IVLP) alum and an entrepreneurship fellow at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea.