TOP 10 YOUNG NIGERIAN ENTREPRENEURS THAT YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED.

In this article guys, we'll be talking about the BEST TOP 10 YOUNG NIGERIAN ENTREPRENEURS  THAT YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED.

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1

Chinedu Echerio is a Nigerian born techpreneur who has made billions by creating various apps and selling them. He  is still very young as compared to other billionaires around the world.

He attended Kings College, Lagos where he attained his basic education. He received his BS (Honors) in Finance and Accounting from Syracuse University between 1991 and 1995. He then proceeded to Harvard University where he got an MBA in general management from the institution in 2000.

Chinedu formerly worked in JPMorgan Chase in the company’s Mergers and Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups.
Chinedu founded an online city transit guide in 2005 called HopStop. He was frustrated with the process of navigating through NYC using the subway. Chinedu was able to solve a shared pain among over 5 million monthly users. The HopStop app provided an online transit map for 600 cities across the globe. Apple Inc. eventually acquired HopStop in 2013.

Chinedu also founded the travel and navigation internet company Tripology.com, which was acquired by Rand McNally in 2010 and is now owned by USA Today.

He later sold the  app for $1bn, invested in food companies in Africa.


2.

Sim Shagaya is a Nigerian entrepreneur and business mogul. He is the founder and former C.E.O of one of West Africa's largest electronic commerce website Konga.com and he is also the executive chairman of DealDey, a daily deal website. In 2014, he was named in Forbes' list of "10 Most Powerful Men in Africa".

He served in the Nigerian Army after completing the Nigerian Military School.  He completed most of his education in the US. He is a graduate of George Washington University and Dartmouth College,

Before Sim started DealDey and Konga.com, he created several websites like Alarena, Jobclan, Gbogbo and iNollyWood which were relatively unsuccessful. In March 2011, DealDey was launched after he convinced the board of the billboard company he owned to invest in DealDey. On 3 July 2012, he founded Konga.com with a capital from Swedish investment firm Kinnevik. According to Sim Shagaya, the primary aim of Konga.com is to "aggregate the youngest and fastest-growing market that was dispersed, under-served and that traditional retailers were simply failing to reach.

Sim Shagaya is estimated to have a net worth of about $300 million.

In 2013 he won Entrepreneur of the Year,
2014 he won the Leadership Conference Awards.


3

29-year-old Ayodeji Adewunmi first took an interest in the Internet in 2006, while studying medicine at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University. He spent the next three years learning the intricacies of establishing and sustaining a business before starting his own company, Jobberman.com

Jobberman was founded in August 2009 by Olalekan Olude, Ayodeji Adewunmi and Opeyemi Awoyemi in their dormitory in Obafemi Awolowo University, to help connect people looking for jobs with companies hiring.

In 2012 the firm added a Ghana branch".  In 2015, Jobberman was acquired 100% by One Africa Media (OAM) in a merger roll-up arrangement that earned previous shareholders of Jobberman, shares in OAM. The following year, (2016) OAM merged with Ringier Africa to become Ringier One Africa Media (ROAM).

He is reportedly worth over $30 million.

4.

Jason Chukwuma Njoku is a Nigerian entrepreneur, film magnate and African start-up investor. He is the co-founder and CEO of iROKOtv, one of the early video-on-demand movie platforms for Nigerian movies A self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur, iROKOtv is Njoku's 11th attempt at starting a business.

Jason was born and raised in Deptford, South-East London, and has described himself as 'solidly working class.

He came up with the idea of launching a new distribution platform for Nollywood whilst living at home with his mum, aged 30, after a number of failed enterprises.

In August 2013, alongside his business partners Bastian Gotter and Mary Remmy Njoku,  launched a $2 million investment vehicle for Lagos-based Internet start-ups called Spark.[20] The company initially invested in 11 companies, including a drinks distribution company called Drinks.ng, a real-estate and property online letting agency called ToLet.com.ng, and a hotel room booking site, called Hotels.ng, which has gone on to raise $1.2 million in VC investment from EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund and Omidyar Network.[21] In 2015, Jason Njoku in a blog post officially announced they're letting go of four startups considered failed businesses.


5

Tayo Oviosu is the Founder and Group CEO of Paga, a mobile payments company that is focused on digitizing cash in emerging economies. Nigeria is Paga's first market.

He is a graduate of Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California and also has a master's degree in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

After graduating from USC, Oviosu started his career at Biomorphic VLSI as a Semiconductor Chip Design Engineer and then Event 411 as a Software Engineer all based in Los Angeles California.


He later went to work for Deloitte Consulting in the CRM and Technology practice as a Senior Consultant. After business school he joined Cisco Systems in San Jose California where he was responsible for strategy, acquisitions and private equity investments in a few segments and helped lead Cisco's investment expansion in Africa with investment opportunities. He led investments and acquisitions which include the $130m acquisition of Reactivity and investment in Guardium.

In 2008, he returned to Nigeria where he joined Travant Capital Partners and served as Vice President. In  2009, he founded Paga to address the use of cash and expand financial access.


6

Bolaji Akinboro is a Nigerian professional and businessman who was born in the 1970s.

he studied for his secondary school education at Baptist High School, Obanikoro. He later enrolled at the Obafemi Awolowo University, in 1988 where he studied Pharmacy until 1992.

Bolaji started his career working as a Sales Manager at Procter & Gamble, before being promoted to the position of a Customer Business Development Manager & Head of Business, Procter & Gamble, Ghana.

Akinboro met Ken Njoroge in the early 2000s while he was working at the African Virtual University. Both of them co-founded Cellulant, with Akinboro “providing strategic and financial support from a board position.”

Cellulant is a Payment Platform Infrastructure Service Provider, with its headquarters in Kenya and presence in more than eleven African countries, including Nigeria. Cellulant provides governments, corporate bodies, retailers and consumers, etc., with access to payment instruments, stores of value, and payment channels.

In Nigeria, Cellulant is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria and insured by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation.


7

Mark Essien, born December 18, 1980 in  Akwa Ibom State  is a Nigerian entrepreneur, software developer and startup investor. He is the founder and CEO of Hotels.ng, one of the first and most successful online hotel booking websites in Nigeria. Before founding Hotels.ng, Mark Essien had previously built a file sharing software called Gnumm (acquired by Snoopstar.com), followed by a language learning startup called Ingolingo.

On April 8 2018, Essien married Jenni Naiaretti, who is also a developer.

Mark is a frequent TedX speaker. He has delivered talks on Leveraging networks to build a business, and how Africa can lead in the global technology space at TedXEuston and TedXGbagada respectively.


8

Linda Ifeoma Ikeji, born on 19 September 1980 is a Nigerian blogger, writer, entrepreneur and former model. She is known for her blog.

Linda Ikeji's blog is apparently her biggest venture. After graduation, Ikeji started blogging in 2006.  She became an active blogger in 2007  using a blogger sub-domain lindaikeji.blogspot.com and later obtained her domain www.lindaikejisblog.com.

Linda Ikeji also ventured into online radio broadcasting. The station is operated from the Linda Ikeji Media Office. Some of its programmes are broadcast live on Linda Ikeji TV.

Ikeji says she and her son's father Sholaye Jeremi are not suitable partners. She took to her blog to detail reasons why her relationship with her son's father, whom she met in December 2015, didn't work out as expected.

9

Tunde Kehinde is co-founder of Nigerian SME-financing company Lidya. He was also a co-founder of e-commerce platform Jumia Nigeria.

Jumia was launched in Lagos in 2012 and expanded to five other countries: Egypt, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Kenya and South Africa. In 2014, the company launched offices in Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Cameroon, Algeria and Tunisia, and by 2018 it was present in 14 African countries. In Egypt, Jumia has been trying to categorize itself as one of the leading e-commerce websites.

In June 2013, Jumia launched Jumia Travel, a hotel booking platform, and Jumia Food, a food delivery platform. Jumia Deals was launched in April 2015. In 2017, Jumia launched Jumia One, an app that enables customers to pay bills such as airtime. The same year, Jumia launched Jumia Pay, a secure payment for people to shop on all Jumia services.


10.

Raphael Afaedor is a co-founder and CEO of Supermart.ng, an online retailer that allows users to shop from supermarkets and retail outlets across Lagos, Nigeria.

In 2012, Kasuwa (which means Market in Hausa Language) was launched with the support of Rocket Internet, MTN, and Millicom, and was later renamed Jumia Group. In March 2016, Jumia Group secured over €300M of funding from MTN, Rocket Internet.

As of 2019, the largest shareholder was MTN Group.

In December 2018, Pernod Ricard invested in Jumia.

In March 2019, Jumia received 50 million euros in investments from Mastercard.

Jumia is listed among the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Smartest Companies 2017. Ranking 47 on the list, Jumia is the only African company named in MIT's top 50 smartest companies.



That's the end of today's article of Top 10 Nigerian entrepreneurs under 40.

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