Bangladesh e-commerce industry: market, trends, growth and future outlook 2026

In Bangladesh, e-commerce means more than websites with shopping carts. It is a spread of channels that all end in the same thing: a courier rider at a door and, usually, cash changing hands. The channels are marketplaces such as Daraz, standalone brand websites, and a very large layer of Facebook and Instagram pages that take orders in comments and inbox messages. That last layer is so large it has its own name here, f-commerce.

Grocery, electronics, fashion, cosmetics and books all sell online, but fashion is where independent brands live. A t-shirt does not need cold storage, fits in a courier bag, and is bought on the strength of a photo. That is why so many of the country's direct-to-consumer brands, Menlab among them, started with clothing.

The first wave, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, was classifieds and a handful of early stores that shipped inside Dhaka. Mobile financial services arrived in 2011 and gave the country a way to move money by phone long before it had card penetration. Daraz launched locally in 2015 and was later bought by Alibaba, bringing marketplace logistics and marketing budgets. Around the same time, Facebook pages became the cheapest possible shopfront, and f-commerce exploded.

The pandemic years pulled demand forward; grocery delivery and fashion both grew quickly. They also produced the industry's defining scandal: several platforms took large advance payments on deep discounts and failed to deliver, leaving tens of thousands of complaints and hundreds of crore taka unresolved [16]. The regulatory response, and the shift in shopper behaviour toward cash on delivery and toward brands with a visible presence, still shapes the market today.

In 2026 the market is large, mobile, fragmented and still mostly paid in cash. Research and Markets put B2C e-commerce at about US$7.4 billion in 2025 [1], ECDB estimates 2025 revenue at just over US$6 billion with 20 to 25% growth on 2024 [2], and a commerce ministry official writing in The Daily Star cited nearly US$7.5 billion for 2024 [3]. The estimates differ by definition, but they agree on the direction and on one detail: online is still only a few percent of total retail [2][3].

Underneath the platforms sits a very long tail. e-CAB's executive director counted over 5 lakh business pages on Facebook, 2 to 2.5 lakh of them run by f-commerce entrepreneurs, and roughly 60,000 selling regularly [5]. Two courier companies each had about 2 lakh f-commerce businesses registered as clients [5].

US$7.4 bn

B2C e-commerce market, 2025 estimate (Research and Markets)[1]

20 to 25%

growth in e-commerce revenue, 2025 over 2024 (ECDB)[2]

60,000

Facebook pages selling regularly, of 5 lakh business pages (e-CAB)[5]

Quote a market size for Bangladesh and someone will quote a different one back. The gap is mostly definition: B2C only versus total, revenue versus gross merchandise value, whether f-commerce is counted at all. The honest way to use these numbers is side by side.

Growth is being pulled by three things: more people online, more of them on smartphones, and more of them with money in a mobile wallet. BTRC counted 135.94 million internet subscribers in June 2026, 120.84 million of them on mobile internet [6]. The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics found 72.8% of households owned a smartphone in fiscal 2024 to 25, up from 63.3% in 2023 [7]. Both figures are still climbing.

Growth is not a straight line. A cap of 10 SIMs per person cut the counted internet subscriber base by 70 lakh between mid 2025 and early 2026 [17], a reminder that subscription counts and real users are different things. The compound rates quoted by forecasters, 11.2% for 2020 to 2024 and 6.8% for 2025 to 2029 in one case [1], are slower than the 20%-plus jumps of the pandemic years, and that is probably the right expectation.

135.9m

internet subscribers, June 2026 (BTRC)[6]

72.8%

of households own a smartphone, FY2024 to 25 (BBS)[7]

6.8%

forecast CAGR for B2C e-commerce, 2025 to 2029[1]

• Mobile first, by a wide margin. PCMI estimates 80% of e-commerce volume happens on a phone [4]. Our own traffic is overwhelmingly mobile, and a site that is slow on a mid-range Android on a 4G connection is a site that does not sell.
• Discovery on social, purchase wherever trust is highest. Shoppers find products on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, then decide where to buy based on who they trust with cash on delivery.
• Cash on delivery as default. Roughly three quarters of volume by PCMI's estimate [4]. See the section below and our dedicated guide.
• Rising expectations on delivery time. Next-day inside Dhaka is now expected, not a bonus.
• Price sensitivity with a quality floor. Shoppers compare aggressively but have been burned by cheap goods often enough that "quality" is now a keyword they search for.

Fashion is one of the largest e-commerce categories in the country and the one with the most independent brands. ECDB estimates fashion e-commerce revenue at US$1.14 billion in 2025, growing 15 to 20% a year, with apparel making up 54% of that and online accounting for 10 to 15% of fashion retail [12]. Bangladesh is also the world's second-largest garment exporter, which means fabric, printing and stitching capacity is close at hand for any brand that wants to make rather than resell.

We cover this in depth in fashion e-commerce in Bangladesh and men's fashion in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is one of Facebook's largest markets. DataReportal counted an ad reach of 64 million in late 2025, alongside 56 million adults on TikTok and nearly 50 million on YouTube [8]. Dhaka alone had the largest city audience reachable by Facebook ads in the world, at 2.99 crore [9]. Selling in comments and inbox messages is therefore not a workaround here; it is a primary channel with its own courier integrations and its own vocabulary.

The weakness of f-commerce is that it is rented land. A page can be restricted, an algorithm change can halve reach, and nothing about a page proves the seller exists. That is the gap independent brand websites fill, and why Menlab treats its Facebook presence as the front door and its own site as the shop. More in social commerce in Bangladesh.

64m

Facebook ad reach in Bangladesh, late 2025 (DataReportal)[8]

2.99 cr

Facebook ad reach in Dhaka, the largest city audience in the world[9]

56m

adults reachable on TikTok in Bangladesh[8]

With 98.9% of households using a mobile phone and 72.8% owning a smartphone [7], the phone is the shop. It changes what a good store looks like: large tap targets, product photos that read at thumb size, a checkout that asks for a phone number before an email, and a site that installs to the home screen. Menlab's storefront is a progressive web app for exactly that reason, and the on-site assistant answers in Banglish because that is how people type on a phone.

Cash on delivery is the settlement layer of the whole industry. It costs sellers refused parcels and slow cash cycles, and it gives buyers the only guarantee that has survived every scandal: no product, no payment. Our full guide explains how COD works and what it costs. The short version is that any new brand that refuses it is asking a first-time customer to carry the risk, and most will decline.

The paradox of Bangladeshi e-commerce is that a country with world-class mobile money still pays for parcels in cash. Mobile financial services moved an average of about Tk 5,883 crore a day in 2025, with bKash at 4.20 crore active users and Nagad at 2.82 crore [10]; bKash reported over 84 million verified customers by 2026 [11]. The wallets are there. They are used for bills, transfers and, increasingly, at merchants. Online, they are mostly used to pay a delivery charge in advance, or to settle with a seller the buyer already trusts.

Card payments online are growing faster from a small base, up 23.6% year on year to about Tk 20.35 billion in February 2025 [3]. The shift to prepaid will follow trust, not the other way round.

4.20 cr

bKash active users, 2025[10]

2.82 cr

Nagad active users, 2025[10]

+23.6%

year-on-year growth in card-based e-commerce payments, Feb 2025[3]

The courier layer is the unsung infrastructure of the industry. Companies such as Steadfast, Pathao Courier, RedX and Sundarban collect from sellers, deliver nationwide, collect cash at the door and settle it back. Their pricing is zoned: inside Dhaka City, the Dhaka sub-urban belt, and the rest of the country. Menlab passes those charges through at cost, ৳60, ৳100 and ৳130 for a standard order, and shows them at checkout.

Delivery times are now reliably 1 to 2 days inside Dhaka and 2 to 4 days to other districts for a well-run seller. The real variables are address quality (a house number and a landmark beat a road name), the customer answering the phone, and the courier's load around Eid.

Trust is the constraint on everything above. A 2024 survey found 52% of online shoppers had experienced refund delays, 62% were confused by return policies and 34% reported quality problems [15]. The legacy of the 2021 platform collapses is a shopper who assumes the worst until shown otherwise [16].

The stores winning in this environment share a pattern: real photos of real stock, a visitable address, named founders, cash on delivery, a written return policy and live tracking. We turned that into a checklist for shoppers, and we hold ourselves to it.

Daraz is the general marketplace, reporting about 8 million monthly active users and delivery to all 64 districts [14], and over 1,000 seller partners at its 2025 seller summit [13]. Chaldal leads grocery, Pickaboo electronics. Newer social-commerce and app-based players, including Hoppi and CartUp, are building shopping around video, creators and curated brands rather than the endless-catalogue model.

Menlab sells on its own website and lists on Daraz, CartUp and Hoppi. The comparison is instructive and covered in the next section.

A direct-to-consumer brand designs or sources its own product, sells under its own name, and owns the customer relationship. In Bangladesh that usually means a Facebook page, a website, a courier account and a small studio. What separates a brand from a reseller is control over the product: fabric checked, fit measured, photos shot in-house.

Menlab is one of these. Two software engineers, a studio in Mohammadpur, a curated collection of men's streetwear, and a stack built in-house from the storefront to the AI assistant to the custom print studio. Our story is the same as many brands in this category: started with a text message, no investors, full-time jobs, and a refusal to sell anything the founders would not wear.

This is the section a report cannot write. Everything below comes from running Menlab: the orders, the support inbox, the marketplace dashboards and the parcels that came back.

• COD behaviour. Orders confirmed on WhatsApp get accepted at the door. Orders that go straight to the courier are a coin toss. Confirmation is a step, not an option.
• Customer hesitation. The last question before an order is almost never about the product. It is about delivery time, the charge, or whether the size will fit. Answer those three on the product page and the cart converts.
• Facebook to website conversion. People discover on Facebook and buy on the site only if the jump is short: one tap to a product page with the price, the size chart and the delivery charge visible. A link to a homepage loses them.
• Price sensitivity. Shoppers compare, but they compare against the last cheap tee that pilled. "Quality" is a search term now. A slightly higher price with a visible reason (fabric weight, real photos, exchange policy) holds.
• Trust issues. New customers ask "is this a real brand?" in so many words. The studio address, the founders' names and cash on delivery answer it better than any ad.
• Delivery charge psychology. The charge is the most-asked question in our support assistant. Showing it before the order button, and making standard delivery free over ৳3,000, changed cart behaviour more than any discount.
• Product photography. Photos shot in-house from real stock reduce "is it the same as the picture?" messages and returns. Supplier images do the opposite.
• Sizing problems. Most exchanges are size, not quality. A per-product size chart and an assistant that suggests a size from height and weight cut them down. Oversized fits need explaining: they are meant to sit loose.
• Return and exchange behaviour. A written 7-day policy with courier pickup is used far less than people fear and trusted far more than people expect. It sells more than it costs.
• Online fashion purchasing. Baskets are small and frequent. Combos and a free-shipping threshold nudge a single tee into two.
• Social commerce. The page is the front door. Comments, inbox and reels bring people in; the website closes because it can show the size chart and the charge.
• Website vs marketplace, Daraz vs independent store. Marketplaces bring reach and take margin, and the customer belongs to the marketplace. The website has less traffic and every customer's phone number. Both are worth having; only one builds a brand.
• Hoppi and the new ecosystem. Video-led, curated apps bring a different shopper: younger, brand-aware, less price-anchored. Early, but worth being on.
• AI shopping assistants. An assistant that answers in Banglish, knows the real policies and refuses to invent a delivery time handles most pre-sale questions at 11 PM. The rule that matters is that it never guesses a fact.
• Gen-Z buying behaviour. They want oversized and drop-shoulder fits, they read reviews, they screenshot the size chart, and they will message on WhatsApp before they trust a checkout. Design for that.

• Trust deficit left by past platform failures, which pushes every seller toward cash on delivery and its costs.
• Refused and fake orders, which make confirmation calls a permanent overhead.
• Address quality and last-mile friction, especially outside the big cities.
• Payment gateway friction and fees that make prepaid harder than it should be.
• Platform dependence for f-commerce sellers whose entire business lives on a Facebook page.
• Regulation that is still catching up, with dispute resolution slow and inconsistent.
• A shortage of honest product information, from sizing to fabric, that leaves shoppers guessing.

• Own the product. A brand with control over fabric and fit can charge for quality in a market tired of disappointment.
• Be visible. An address, names and a studio are cheap and beat any trust badge.
• Build for the phone, in the language people type in.
• Sell outside Dhaka. Nationwide couriers make districts reachable; most brands still ignore them.
• Use the garment industry. Printing, fabric and stitching capacity is local; print-on-demand and small-batch made-to-order are practical here in a way they are not in most countries.
• Publish real information. Size charts, fabric weights, delivery tables and honest policies are still rare enough to be a competitive advantage.

The next stage is less about more shoppers and more about better shopping. Expect prepaid to grow slowly as trusted brands accumulate history with their customers, expect couriers to compete on next-day outside Dhaka, and expect video and creator-led commerce to take share from static feeds. Marketplaces will keep the volume; brands with their own sites will keep the customers.

Forecasters see the B2C market reaching roughly US$9.65 billion by 2029 [1] and the government's own framing expects about US$9.8 billion by 2028 [3]. With online still only a few percent of retail, even those numbers leave most of the growth ahead. The brands that will be around in 2030 are the ones that treat trust as the product: honest photos, honest sizes, honest charges, and a door someone can knock on.

US$9.65 bn

forecast B2C e-commerce market by 2029 (Research and Markets)[1]

US$9.8 bn

expected market by 2028 (commerce ministry framing)[3]

0 to 5%

online share of total retail today, the headroom (ECDB)[2]