Ananya Raihan

Principal Investigator

Ananya Raihan is the Technical Advisor for Fairwork Bangladesh. Ananya is the CEO of iSocial (Infolady Social Enterprise Limited).

Starting his career in academia and policy research and subsequently engaging in social entrepreneurship, Dr Raihan blended multi-disciplinary knowledge in generating insights for decision making for enterprises he led, as well as, for other institutions. The multidisciplinary mesh includes Mathematical Modelling, Economics, Trade in Services, Entrepreneurship, Women Empowerment and Digital Media.

During his policy research career, Dr Raihan led research in a leading think tank in Bangladesh on trade in services, especially on migration issues. Alongside his contribution in policy research, he also produced research papers for ADB, ICTSD, WTO-ITC, UNCTAD, IDRC, UNICEF, OXFAM, UNESCO, and many other institutions at home and abroad.

Taking a break from his policy research career, Dr Raihan founded several social enterprises, connecting digital technology with the development sector. During his entrepreneurship career, Dr Raihan led the design of products and services which have scaled up to millions of beneficiaries and clients in Bangladesh, especially marginalized communities. His approach towards sustainability is a hybrid of a market-based approach and a public goods approach.

He led the design of a monitoring and evaluation framework and real-time monitoring system for large scale projects. ‘Systems thinking’ and ‘design thinking’ are two core methodologies Dr Raihan applies in designing solutions for any problem.

Dr Raihan holds a PhD in Economics, for his research titled ‘Forecasting for Product Renewal using a Combination of Stochastic and Semantic Modelling’ from the National Academy of Science in Kiev, Ukraine.

For Fairwork, Raihan provides strategic consultation and is involved in stakeholder management and research design.