Inside Jason Njoku’s multimillion naira online business empire

With 1 million visitors watching from 178 countries every single month on iROKOtv, and investments in 13 different companies under SPARK, his latest company, Jason Njoku has built a business empire barely four years of return from the UK penniless, writes OBINNA EMELIKE.

In his early 30s, yet he has made attempts at becoming an entrepreneur even while pursuing a BSc in Chemistry at the University of Manchester.

His case is like the popular saying: “If you try and do not succeed, try, try, try again.” He tried for six years and struggled to find his business niche with no real success – from publishing, a professional blog network, t-shirt business, among others.

With several failed attempts to start-up a business and a seeming frustration that followed afterwards, he relocated from the UK to Nigeria in 2010, with his mother, penniless.

But it was that return that changed the story of Jason Njoku. While back in Nigeria, it was with less effort that he founded, and at last, succeeded with iROKOtv, an internet television streaming service. Shortly after it was launched in 2010, iROKOtv truly burst onto the global internet scene and notched up 500,000 subscribers in just six months. Today, the service is available to millions of people around the world.

“We have around 1 million unique visitors every single month, and these people are watching from 178 countries around the world – from Nigeria to the US, UK and Canada, as well as Malaysia, Thailand and Hungary. Where there are a lot of Nigerians, they are in search of some home-groomed entertainment, and iROKOtv gives them a slice of home,” Njoku, the CEO of iROKO Partners, explained.

While his stories of failures in business are pitiable, that of his success is laughable. “It all started when we (my mother and I) came back from the UK penniless and feeling humbled. I was 29 then, and had left home over 10 years. I noticed that my mother had changed from watching British soap operas to Nollywood movies. One day, she asked me to locate some new movies for her and, instinctively, as an internet geek, I went online. Surprisingly, I could not find anything, could not watch movies online and I could not buy the DVDs. So, I thought, how could something so popular not be available online? It literally made no sense to me. So, I did some research, saw a hole in the market and that was the birth of iROKOtv,” he narrated.

Njoku’s iROKOtv is the home of Nollywood online, while iROKING is a music streaming service, which has been dubbed by some as the ‘Spotify’ of Africa. There are around 35,000 songs online by about 200 African artistes.

The online movie viewing platform of a sort streams Nollywood movies over the internet to a global audience. “We have a catalogue of around 5,000 films with the industry’s biggest artistes and covering genres from family, drama, comedy, and horror. However, about 95 percent of www.irokotv.com,” according to Njoku, “is completely free. You just go onto the site, click on a movie you want to watch and go from there. It is super-simple. For the big Nollywood fans who want to be the first to watch brand new movies, we have a subscription service called iROKOtv PLUS, which gives users access to three brand new movies every week.

“On our site, we also have iROKOtv Extras, which shows behind-the-scenes interviews with celebrities and footage from movie and music video sets. We also recently added a ‘series’ section onto iROKOtv, and have just bought and uploaded 13 popular Nigerian TV series. They are now showing for free. Content is absolutely critical to everything we do, so we are always uploading new movies and shows onto the site to keep our fans happy and engaged.”

While leading a global team of over 100 people, located in Lagos, London, New York, and Johannesburg, Njoku works predominantly with the business development teams, the content team and the technical team to ensure the site is running smoothly, and also checks all other teams around the world periodically. Above all, he ensures that the site is monetised as best as the team can.

But, as much as his business is online based, poor access and expensive internet on the African continent pose a big problem. “This year, we are making effort at solving the ‘African problem’ of internet access. By that, I mean how we can bring Nollywood to Africa via iROKOtv. Internet on the continent is still expensive and out of the reach of the majority of sub-Saharan Africa, which poses a problem for us, a video-streaming company,” he noted.

One way out of the internet access challenge is DVD publishing business. Starting in Johannesburg, South Africa, iROKOtv is now publishing its biggest movies on DVD and selling them throughout the city.

Another measure aimed at solving the internet access problem, according to Njoku, is an app they built earlier this year for iROKOtv in partnership with Nokia, who the video-streaming company is looking up to bring Nollywood to their Nokia Lumia phone to give more people access to watch iROKOtv, even on their phones.

“We speak to people all around the world, figuring out ways in which we can put awesome content on their platforms, making access to Nollywood as easy as possible,” he noted.

He is also excited by the tech start-up space in Nigeria and Africa, despite the fact that billions of dollars of value have been attributed to tech and internet-based companies in Europe, North and South America, and even Asia; not so in Africa.

“There is unprecedented economic growth on the continent and we have a growing population that will soon see the purchasing of consumer products and services online as an everyday action for all, rather than a luxury for the few. But the tech start-up space in Africa, for me, means unlimited possibilities; no shackles, no restrictions. In the next three to five years, Africa’s tech ‘scene’ will easily have turned into a ‘revolution.’ Those who choose to take on these challenges now are the ones who will make a real difference and reap the many benefits of doing business in such an exciting frontier market,” he said.

He hopes to see more growth, more ingenuity, more investment, more hustle in Africa’s tech space. “The tech space in Nigeria is currently worth around $250 million – in the next three to five years, it should be $1 billion. The potential is there, but without formal investment, it will not be realised – and what a huge waste that will be,” he imagined.

With the successful launch and acceptance of iROKOtv by the global online public, Njoku recently launched SPARK with Bastian Gotter, his business partner and Mary, his wife.

“SPARK is a company that builds companies. We have so far invested in 13 different companies, ranging from a hotel room booking site, to a bus ticket site and a drink company distributor. I feel that Lagos is very much the gateway for the entire continent and the creativity, talent and the spirit of entrepreneurship is here, but Nigeria’s business set up is not structured enough to adequately support start-ups in their earliest days. Our intention with SPARK is to act as the catalyst to a period of aggressive and exciting growth in Africa’s internet sector,” he disclosed.

However, as Iroko Partners’ business portfolio grows with iROKOtv, iROKING, and recently SPARK, the Nigerian online business mogul is just starting.

“We have big plans to be one of the foremost media and entertainment companies in Africa. We have already seen rapid expansion in our short period in business – we have opened four offices (Lagos, London, New York, and Johannesburg). We have built a team of 100+, and have aggregated the world’s largest online catalogue of African movies, besides moving into off-line movie distribution. I see us expanding into East Africa and beyond the continent in the not too distant future. Well, I am sure you will read all about it when it happens,” he said.