Nigerian Founder of Irokotv, Nollywoodlove and Spark Jason Njoku
cited by Forbes Africa as one of the young dollar millionaires to watch, is indeed
confirmed to be a Nigerian Billionaire with his foray into Financing Tech start
ups. The 35 year old alongside his business partners Bastian Gotter and his
wife Mary Njoku launched a $2m investment vehicle for Lagos-based Internet
start-ups called Spark. The company initially invested in 11 companies,
including a Drinks distribution company called Drinks.ng, a real-estate /
property online letting agency called ToLet.com.ng, and a Hotel room booking
site, called Hotel.ng, which has gone on to raise $1.2m in Venture Capital investment from
EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund and Omidyar Network.
Njoku, who was raised in Deptford
Southeast London has described himself as a solidly working class council
estate kid. He had initially tried to start many businesses unsuccessfully ,
from selling shirts, a blog service and
a web design company.
He got lucky when he struck a deal with You Tube Germany
to be the official channel provider for Nollywood. He went on to purchase the
licenses for many Nollywood movies. He became an instant success and caught the
attention of US Venture Capital fund
Tiger Global (early Investors in Facebook) and was rewarded with a $3 million
initial investment. He used the fund to
expand his business into 178 different countries. He went on to raise another
$22 million from other investors and built his film catalogue to a formidable
size of 5,000 movies launching offices in Lagos, London and New York. His key
selling point was to use technology to drive entertainment. His argument being
that the West has Hulu and Netflix while Africa has nothing. Jason has an
estimated networth of $30 million.
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