Bengali professional practice spans West Bengal (population ~92 million, with Kolkata as the centre), Bangladesh (population ~170 million, with Dhaka and Chittagong as the centres), Tripura, the Barak Valley of Assam, plus the Bengali diaspora in the UK, the US, the Gulf, and increasingly Australia and Canada. The combined Bengali-speaking professional market is roughly 270 million people — larger than most national markets.
Kolkata is one of India's oldest commercial centres, with deep ecosystems in financial services (some of India's oldest banks), shipping and ports (Kolkata Port and Haldia Port), tea and jute trading, leather and footwear (the Bantala leather complex), legal services (Calcutta High Court is one of India's three oldest), publishing and academia (the University of Calcutta, the Indian Statistical Institute, IIM Calcutta, IISER Kolkata, and a deep cluster of research institutions). Dhaka is the centre of South Asia's largest ready-made garments export industry, with substantial pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and IT-services sectors growing.
The Bengali-language professional infrastructure includes Bengali-language professional press in both India (Anandabazar Patrika, Bartaman, Sangbad Pratidin) and Bangladesh (Prothom Alo, The Daily Star Bengali, Kalbela), trade publications across the major subjects, and deep cross-border professional and trade networks. For the MSME-founder persona, the cross-border India-Bangladesh trade ecosystem (with the recent BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement and trade-facilitation infrastructure) is one of the most active sub-regional trade corridors in South Asia.