Moving
Bangladesh
A memoir about building Pathao — the first super app to grow out of Bangladesh — by the person who lived through every late night of it.
Read the first chapter free
The on-the-ground story of building Pathao - this is the story of how it actually happened. From the rooftop of the worst day of my life to building one of the largest technology platform in Bangladesh.
Pick the copy that moves you
The Real Story
The story is real and years in the making, and the lessons hard learnt. And now you can read about it in details for the first time!
A country the world wrote off
Bangladesh was never supposed to produce a tech company. It was supposed to produce garments, remittances, and occasionally floods that make international news. Nobody in Silicon Valley was watching Dhaka. No investor had Bangladesh anywhere near their thesis.
It begins the way most real stories do: not with a grand vision, but with a problem nobody else wanted to solve. A failed CNG tracking app. A carpooling service that died after three months. Ten projects that went nowhere across a year and a half in a borrowed office in Banani. Then came a simple idea - instant bike deliveries in Dhaka. No app, no algorithm. Three cyclists recruited from a Facebook group, a spreadsheet held together with prayer, and sixty taka per parcel.
Uber, Spotify, Amazon, Airbnb — companies that faced versions of the same problems. Their choices illuminate what Pathao did right, and where it went badly wrong.
This is equally a book about Bangladesh itself. About a culture where startup thinking is practically a foreign language. Where hartald can shut your entire operation down overnight. Where you can change the transport habits of a generation, put 50,000 people to work, and still feel like you have something left to prove.
Meet the author
Hussain Elius is a technologist and serial entrepreneur — founder of Pathao, Wind and Fin.com. His companies have raised a combined $100M+ in venture capital and span multiple categories, from consumer ride-sharing and foodtech to enterprise blockchain and international money movement, with Fortune 500 companies among their investors and clients.
Elius was born and raised in Dhaka and was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30, TechCrunch, NASDAQ, Tatler Gen.T, Nikkei and more.
What people are saying
Nuhash Humayun
Filmmaker
I have spent my career looking for Dhaka stories that the world would watch. This is one. The Moving Bangladesh journey is thrilling, dramatic and chaotic. You will find yourself learning from the failures and inspired by the successes. In one word: cinematic.
Fahim Salam
CEO, Nuport
As real as it gets. Straight from the mouth of an operator.
Shadman Sakib
Software Engineer
It reads like a thriller, except all of it actually happened. You'll be angry on one page and hopeful on the next, and at some point you'll put it down just to sit with what you've read. What stayed with me were the lessons about what it really takes to build something from Bangladesh. There's a lot packed in here, all of it hard-won. Worth your time.
Bijon Islam
Co-Founder/CEO, LightCastle Partners
Have always loved reading entrepreneurship biographies, but most are from Western markets. To read one from frontier markets, and that too from Bangladesh, my home country, was heartfelt. Elius takes you on a movie-like journey of Pathao—the inception, first investments, moving from delivery to ride-sharing, and facing existential challenges. As someone who has lived through the same time as him, this hit much closer to heart. If you want to know what it is like to found a startup and the pains and glory that come with it—do pick this up!
30% discount for Pathao employees
Pathao employees get 30% discount on the order --- just use your @pathao.com email address at checkout!
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