• Thursday, April 18, 2024
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BusinessDay

From media design, The Avenue Creative goes beyond technology

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Ten years ago, The Avenue Creative Limited set out to solve a collection of diverse problems in different industries for Nigerians of every social and economic class.

The company has served clients’ needs in industries as divergent as telecommunication, agriculture, oil & gas, banking, education, and Tourism. Its first client was an oil and gas company, in Ikoyi, Lagos, which took six months to secure while operating as a sole proprietor vendor.

During the company’s early days, there were discussions with the integrated transport and logistics company Maersk and banking institution Zenith to explore offerings.

The company’s story started in June 2011 when Ade Olufeko a seasoned technologist came to the crossroads of either following the crowd by repatriating back to Lagos, Nigeria, or to accept a consulting offer at PayPal Inc, at its financial subsidiary outside the Baltimore area. Although Olufeko followed the latter to gain more enterprise experience on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, West African consumers who encountered him kept their business relations advancing.

The Avenue Creative started with media design services for major players in the Nigerian film and music industry, offering premium web hosting services before the market became saturated. The growing organisation affected by the recession of 2015-2016, resurfaced with a product joint venture, providing the real estate market solutions aimed at easing discrepancies of diesel and electricity fraud in the rental property market.

In 2020, things started to stabilise and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company advised feeding coalitions. It has also announced it would diversify its public offerings with custom electronics such as CCTV and peripherals for small to medium-sized businesses in Lagos. The company joined the Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the year 2019. As a giveback principle learned from his days at IBM, its founder served as a judge for the PAADC 3.0 and 4.0 engineering competition at the University of Lagos and as a guest speaker at LCCI.

Olufeko has served as the principal consultant to expand the company’s digital footprint and participated in symposiums at the Lagos Business School, Carnegie Mellon and Oxford University. He has served as a special guest moderator at other institutions such as Columbia University in New York and the London Business School.

An indigenous company, it is a general partner and subsidiary of Visual Collaborative North America. The Avenue aligns with Sustainable Development Goals 9, 10, and 11 exploring the “barriers to entry” in those markets. Visit www.theavenue.ng