Bangladesh's first shopping and entertainment mall attracted huge crowds when it opened Monday seeking to serve a burgeoning, cash-rich middle class in one of the world's poorest countries.
"A huge number of people started coming from morning," the Dhaka mall's administrative officer Ahsan Uddin told AFP.
The 21-floor Bashundhara City complex took six years to build and also features a multiplex cinema, gym, foodcourt and indoor theme park.
Plans include more than 2,000 shops spread over 18 million square feet (1.6 million square metres).
"Bangladesh doesn't have anything like this but it is starting to catch up now with the rest of the world," said Fancy Rahman, 33, a full-time mother.
The centre's executive director Mohammed Ahsanullah said it would offer a new experience for the capital's 12 million people.
"The facilities for leisure and entertainment in the city are really insufficient at the moment and this centre will be the first to try to fill that gap," he said.
Nearly half of the Bangladeshi population lives on less than a dollar a day, but as in neighbouring India, a growing and increasingly Westernised middle class has money to spend on consumer products and services.
In the year to June 30, Bangladesh imported luxury and other goods worth more than 15 billion taka (260 million dollars), a jump of 32.3 percent on the previous 12 months, commerce ministry figures show. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.5 percent, continuing an upward trend.
The new-found affluence is visible all over.