2023.03.02

Bangladesh National Baseball Team and Japanese IT company SUN signed a sponsorship agreement

SUN (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo, President and CEO: Shumpei Nakasone) signed a sponsorship agreement on Friday, February 24, 2023, with the Bangladesh National Baseball Team, which has a Japanese national coach.

■About Bangladesh Baseball-Softball Association (BBSA)
Bangladesh Baseball-Softball Association (BBSA) is the national baseball team of Bangladesh, officially registered by the Bangladesh government. The Bangladesh Baseball Federation, represented by Mr Daiki Watanabe, became the national team of Bangladesh in 2009 when it was recognized by the government as the official federation. In 2017, the team began working with the Bangladesh Police. Police officers from the sports quota have joined the team as players and have been practising at the police station. In 2019, the team joined the WBSC and participated in the world ranking.

■Background of Sponsorship Agreement
Since SUN established its Bangladesh branch office, it has continued various activities aimed to strengthen the bridge between Japan and Bangladesh. Bangladesh is expected as the next business field due to its rapid economic development and abundance of highly skilled IT human resources, but only 338 Japanese companies (according to JETRO survey in 2022) have expanded their business to Bangladesh. Therefore, SUN has decided to sign this sponsorship agreement aiming to introduce the advantages of Bangladesh to Japanese people and Japanese companies through a popular sport in Japan, baseball. Through sports, we expect to grow the relationship between the two countries.SUN also expects to cooperate with the companies it meets through this project in their business aspects and provide both sides with an opportunity to grow their businesses.

■Outline of Sponsorship Agreement
The SUN logo will be placed on official WBC uniforms, training wear, baseball caps, etc.

■Photos from the sponsorship signing ceremony
　　

■Photos from the training sessions
　　

■Comments from Shumpei Nakasone, President and CEO, of SUN Co.
I was moved by Mr. Watanabe’s strong and passionate will to make baseball, a popular sport in Japan, a major sport in Bangladesh, which led me to decide to sign the sponsorship agreement. We are proud to have the SUN logo on the team’s uniform at the WBSC West Asia Games in 2023, which was the team’s first participation in the WBSC Games. We hope that the team will continue to train hard for the next tournament in four years and that they will become an even greater team than they are now. With this sponsorship, SUN supports them and works together with the team members.

■About Daiki Watanabe
He is the co-chairman of “Ekmatla”, a non-profit organization that supports street children, and the national coach of the Bangladesh national baseball team. He founded the non-profit organization “Ekmatla” with his colleagues during his school days and started providing education to children living on the streets and operating a children’s home. In order to build a school to train the next generation of leaders, he raised funds by producing a film about the current situation of street children, “A Town Like An Ant Hell,” and opened the Ekmatla Academy in 2018. He established “Ekmatla Entrepreneurs Inc.” in 2013 to create jobs for the children in Ekmatla and to raise funds for their activities, and he is the president of the company.

■Related Links
Ekmatla, a non-profit organization that supports street children
https://www.ekmattra.org/jp/index.html

SUN sponsors a local soccer team that has a Japanese captain
https://www.sun21.co.jp/news/sponsor/

■SUN Co., Ltd
https://www.sun21.co.jp/
We are an IT company that operates a system integration business, Web design and a foreign resident support business under the corporate philosophy “To become a globally-renowned company based on our mission ‘connect people with people’ “. We actively hire globally, and by connecting people, create new value and deliver innovation to the world.