THE STORY OF A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS MAN CAN INSPIRE YOU FOR GREATNESS
After a number of failed enterprises
between 2005 and 2010, which included a blog network, a T-shirt business and a
web design company,[4] Njoku moved back home into his mother's
house in Deptford. It was there that he came up with the idea of starting a Nollywood online distribution business, "The
West had Hulu and Netflix – Africa had nothing", notes Njoku.[5] Having studied the industry from afar,
he flew to Lagos, thanks to the financial help of his best
friend Bastian Gotter, a fellow University of Manchester graduate, and started
purchasing the online licences of Nollywood movies.[6] He worked from a two-bedroom apartment
in Festac, Lagos,[7] and struck a deal with YouTube in
Germany to be the official channel partner for Nollywood company.[2]
In 2010, Njoku and Gotter launched
NollywoodLove, a YouTube channel, which was profitable within two months of
launch.[8] That same year, thanks to an article by
Sarah Lacy who worked at the time for Tech Crunch, NollywoodLove caught the attention
of US-based venture capital fund
Tiger Global, early investors in Facebook, who
were interested in expanding their reach in emerging markets.[9]
Series A investment of
$3 million was secured from Tiger Global in 2010 and the company launched
a stand-alone video-on-demand movie platform, iROKOtv, on 1 December 2011. The site drew in
viewers from 178 countries around the world.[10] Njoku and Gotter have since gone on to
raise an additional $22 million from international VCs, with inclusion
from Investment AB Kinnevik and RISE Capital[11] and have used the investment to build
an extensive film catalogue of 5,000 movies,[12] launch offices in Lagos, New York and
London and invest in improving the company's technology resource.
In 2015, Njoku decided to focus the
company's attention on an Android mobile app,[13][14] rather than a streaming platform to
combat broadband infrastructure problems that Africa poses.
In July 2012, he was cited by Forbes
Africa as one of the 'Ten Young African Millionaires to Watch'.[15] On 29 August 2013, Njoku was named as
the CNBC All Africa Business Awards Young Leader of the Year for West Africa.[16] He has also been named as one of Fast
Company's Top 1000 Most Creative People in Business.[17]
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