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“Moving Back In With My Mum Was Kind Of Humiliating” – Jason Njoku
“Every film industry needs a mogul and for Nigeria’s film industry, Nollywood, Jason Njoku might just be it”. – Forbes Africa, September 2012.
That’s how the September 2012 issue of Forbes Africa magazine begins a centre spread feature of Nigerian Internet maverick and millionaire, Jason Njoku, co-founder of the Iroko brand.
With a vernacular peppered with swearwords and a touch of the charming South London wideboy, Njoku, 31, made headlines back in April when Tiger Global, a $9 billion private equity fund, led an $8 million funding round backing his latest venture, Iroko Partners, writes Pete Guest.
Recall that in an exclusive interview with TechLoy back in April 2012, Njoku shared how his company’s awesome Internet offerings attracted funding from a $9 billion venture and private equity firm as well as some of the company’s figures and future plans.
The deal which is considered the largest early-stage deal ever announced by any Africa-focused tech company has catapulted the London-born businessmen into the position of a bona fide wunderkind, the magazine added in its opening words.
In the feature, Njoku shared his own personal story about failure, mistakes and success. “I spent a good three years making every mistake there was to make about how to run a business,”, he said. “I ran out of money, I ran out of friends who would lend me money. I was forced to stop.”
Njoku revealed that before Iroko Partners, he ran at least ten ventures including a blog network, a magazine, a T-shirt company and a web design venture in the past, some multi-year projects, while others lasted for a few months. He even had a short hiatus in formal employment, as a recruitment consultant in London.
At a point, he was forced to move in with his mum, which Njoku described as “kind of humiliating”, although “it’s kind of the hero’s journey”. And that move gave birth to the idea for Iroko Partners.
Apparently, Jason’s mother, who he remembers mainly watching British soap operas on TV, was now watching Nollywood films on DVD, but finding these movies to buy online wasn’t possible and even the stores in London’s Brixton Market offered neither an identification of Nollywood films on the movie shelves nor any kind of formalised, organised distribution.
That’s when he thought to himself: “this thing seems to be very popular, but there seems to be no distribution around it.”
The rest is history.
Jason Njoku was TechLoy’s Person of The Year 2011, for giving Nollywood movies a new home online and making it accessible for free to movie lovers; for revolutionising the way we watch movies and listen to music online. You can read the full Forbes story on Jason’s personal blog.
Here are other links where you can read about Jason Njoku profile and interviews:-
http://techloy.com/2011/11/26/jason-njoku-why-i-am-terrified-of-failure/
http://techloy.com/2011/11/26/jason-njoku-why-i-am-terrified-of-failure/
http://techloy.com/2011/08/02/jason-njoku-on-nollywood-movies-and-africas-internet-revolution-video/
-Source: techloy
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