Meet Jason Njoku; Co-founder of IrokoTV
Jason Njoku’s story is the sort that stirs the spirit and spurs anyone to shake off any despondency and reach for the stars.
Mobile entertainment and internet TV platform IrokoTV has become a darling channel of entertainment today in Africa for its impressive catalogue of African ‘Nollywood’ movies, on the back of tenacity, shrewdness, sacrifice and an undaunting focus and commitment to succeed.
Jason Njoku is a co-founder of the platform doing remarkably well today, but you can be sure that the road to success was surely bumpy, as the struggle in the early days of this business was not as glamorous.
Jason tried out his hands on several other businesses in the UK without much or desired success. He thereafter returned to Nigeria in 2010 and began building relationships with local movie producers and purchase content rights for his new startup, IrokoTV.
Cash was tight, and starting this business would have been impossible without the £90,000 contribution of Jason’s friend and business partner, Sebastian.
Since then, the growth of IrokoTV has been remarkable. To date, the business has attracted up to $40 million in investment funding from foreign investors, most venture capital investors.
Its investors include Tiger Global, a New York-based private equity firm, and Investment AB Kinnevik, a Swedish venture capital investor.
Venture capital firms invest more than $140 billion every year in startups and growth businesses across the world. But in Africa, venture capital is only just starting to pick up and they’re very interested in funding highly-scalable businesses that have significant profit potential.
In January 2016, IrokoTV raised $19 million in additional funding to expand its business into Francophone countries in Africa.In summary, by using a combination of business partnerships and venture capital, Jason has been able to successfully raise significant amounts of capital to grow a company that was described by Forbes Magazine as “the Netflix of Africa.”
