Walk through Uttara Sector 4 on a weekday afternoon and the name DOM-INNO is not hard to find. It sits on gate plaques, on project boards and on the lips of brokers who know the area flat by flat. The company, DOM-INNO Builders Ltd, was established in 2002, and its founder and managing director is architect Abdus Salam. Its own website presents it as a builder of homes and workspaces in Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara, Dhanmondi, Uttara and Mirpur. The largest cluster of its work is in Uttara. That much is the company's own account, and it is where any profile has to start.
The scale the company claims is large. A company listing carried by IndoConnex says DOM-INNO has handed over 253 projects, with 52 ongoing and eight upcoming. The Business Standard, in an investigation published in September 2025, reported that the company had completed around 254 residential projects at its peak. The two counts line up closely, and Uttara holds the biggest share of them.
The buildings buyers know
The project names tell the story of where the company worked. DOM-INNO Octavia stands at House 8, Road 2/B, Sector 4, Uttara, a 2,315 sq ft apartment project, according to the company's site. DOM-INNO Adonia Hafsa sits on Plot 4, Road 10, Sector 1, Uttara. DOM-INNO Alito, in Uttara Sector 7, was presented by the company as a luxury apartment complex with ready flats. Beyond Uttara, the company lists Ventus in Gulshan, Promessa in Shantinagar, Valentia in Uttara and a business centre in Mirpur among its ongoing work. Grazioso, a 13-storey building in Gulshan 2 with 96 apartments, was built on land that once belonged to former Justice K. M. Sobhan, according to the company's own project page. The architecture in these projects follows a clear pattern: glass, balconies, a planted entrance, and a pitch to buyers who want a prime address.
For years that pitch worked. The Business Standard reported that at its peak the company reached an annual turnover of Tk1,000 crore. Buyers paid in advance for flats in buildings that carried the DOM-INNO name, and landowners signed joint venture agreements in the expectation of a share of the finished building. The company grew fast, and its name became familiar across Dhaka's prime neighbourhoods.
The other half of the record
That is only half the story. The same investigation by The Business Standard, published in September 2025, reported that DOM-INNO had left 56 projects incomplete, with buyers paying for around 2,000 apartments valued at over Tk3,000 crore that remain unfinished. The Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh had received complaints involving 142 projects over 15 years, according to the report. The company and its managing director face more than 150 fraud-related cases, including 136 lodged at Banani Police Station alone, and around 250 legal actions covering fraud, cheque bouncing, embezzlement and money laundering are in various stages of trial, the report said. The Anti-Corruption Commission accuses Abdus Salam of defrauding buyers, laundering funds abroad and diverting investment into other ventures, including Leon Pharmaceuticals Ltd, according to the same report. A company official told The Business Standard that Abdus Salam was abroad, a claim the paper said it could not independently verify.
Those are allegations and court proceedings, not findings of guilt, and they must be read that way. But they are not a footnote. They are the reason many buyers who paid DOM-INNO still do not have a flat. Landowners in several projects told the paper they had not been paid under their contracts. The pattern described in the complaints is consistent: flats sold in advance, construction stalled, and buyers left waiting for years.
What a buyer should take from this
DOM-INNO's story carries a lesson that goes beyond one company. A long list of completed projects does not, on its own, prove that a new project will be finished. Buyers who are offered a DOM-INNO flat today, whether a resale or a new booking, should check the status of that specific building first. Has it been handed over? Is the deed registered? Are there cases involving the project? A broker's assurance is not a substitute for those checks, and a company brochure is not a substitute either.
Uttara still carries the buildings DOM-INNO finished, and families live in them. It also carries the buildings it did not finish, and families wait for them. Both are part of the record, and any buyer, landowner or lender dealing with the name should know both before signing anything.
