BLACK #FABS:::Have you met one of London's top black men of power, Jason Njoku...Black Enterprise Magazine

 

iROKOtv which has been dubbed the ‘Netflix’ of Africa, is the world’s largest legal digital distributor of African movies.

Jason Njoku is CEO and Co-Founder of iROKO Partners. He graduated from the University of Manchester in 2005 with a Chemistry degree. After several failed business attempts in the world of online media, he moved back home with his mum at the age of 29. Whilst back at home, he observed his mum’s love of watching Nollywood films. A search for a reliable source of films online yielded nothing, and so the idea to stream Nollywood films online was born. In 2010, Jason moved to Lagos and set-up iROKO Partners.

Nollywood Love was the company’s first platform, streamed on YouTube. To-date, iROKO Partners is YouTube’s largest partner in Africa. In 2012, the company launched iROKOtv, a platform to stream Nollywood movies.  The site has recorded over 800,000 registered users and today, 14 million hours of movies have been watched in 178 countries around the world.

iROKO Partners was also one of the first companies in the Nigerian digital music scene, launching iROKING in 2011. The platform has almost 100,000 registered users who have access to over 35,000 tracks by 400+ artists.

Across all the iROKO Partners’ platforms, 193,000,000 minutes of entertainment are consumed every month.

In 2012, Forbes Africa named Jason as one of Africa’s Top Young Millionaires to watch. He has also been named as one of London’s Top Black Men of Power in Black Enterprise Magazine.

iROKO Partners has over 110 employees in offices in Lagos, London and New York.

History

iROKOtv is a web platform that provides paid-for Nigerian films on-demand. It is one of Africa’s first mainstream online movie steaming websites, giving instant access to over 5,000 Nollywood film titles. iROKOtv is a part of iROKO Partners which is one of Africa’s leading entertainment companies, housing brands such as iROKING, an online music platform and its YouTube website, Nollywoodlove.

iROKOtv was launched on 1 December 2011. Its parent company, iROKO Partners, was founded by Jason Njoku and Bastian Gotter in December 2010, with its headquarters in Anthony village, Lagos, Nigeria. iROKOtv which has been dubbed the ‘Netflix’ of Africa, is the world’s largest legal digital distributor of African movies.

His Story

Njoku made several attempts to set up his own companies in the immediate years after university, but failed on each attempt.

Njoku was inspired to start the company when he found it difficult to obtain Nollywood movies online for his mother, who he was living with at the time. Having researched the Nollywood industry, and noting the lack of infrastructure in place for international distribution of the movies, Njoku flew to Lagos, Nigeria, and purchased the online licenses of Nollywood movies directly from the producers. Having struck a deal with YouTube in Germany, he used the Google-owned platform to stream the licensed Nollywood movies, for free, on his channel, Nollywoodlove.

The channel became hugely popular and was profitable in a short space of time and was the focus of a number of press features in international press, including CNBC, CNN and Techcrunch. The success of Nollywoodlove lead to a successful investment from US-based hedge fund Tiger Global, who led a two-round investment totaling US$8 million, making it one of the biggest single investments into a West African Dot-com venture. A further investment round of $2m, led by Swedish-based hedge fund Kinnevik, followed in July 2012.

iROKOtv works with most of Nollywood’s top film production houses and purchases the exclusive online licenses to their films, In an attempt to distribute Nollywood films to a global audience. The company’s audience is predominantly in the Diaspora, with top five countries including the US, UK, Canada, Germany and Italy.
Njoku is often recognized by his peers and in the media as a pioneer in African tech start-ups and in 2012 was voted by Black Enterprise Magazine as one of London’s top black men of power.

Services iROKOtv operates a freemium business model where users can access Nollywood movies. The significant majority of the website, approximately 95%, is totally free with the rest of the site operating a subscription service called iROKOtv PLUS, that gives subscribers access to brand new Nollywood movies (2012 onwards) for only $5 a month. The new service was launched by Nollywood stars and iROKOtv brand ambassadors, Funke Akindele and Tonto Dikeh.

Internet Video Streaming iROKOtv’s video player is currently powered by Ooyala, who are an online video technology provider and service. iROKOtv also enjoys content distribution deals with YouTube, Dailymotion, iTunes, Amazon and Vimeo.

Global business In 2012, the company opened offices in London and New York and in 2013, the company added a further business hub, this time in Johannesburg. The company has also forged partnerships with leading global technology firms, including Nokia, who launched the iROKOtv App on the Nokia Lumia in January 2013.

We made all kinds of stupid mistakes. In the first year of iROKOtv we raised $13m, match that with startup CEO immaturity; overspent on everything. From product development, to office setups, to staff costs, to movie license acquisitions (we distorted the price so much even DStv Africa Magic were aghast) taking Internet licenses from $1,500 to $23,000 in less than a year. Of course, we have had to course correct aggressively on most of these things. The market has remembered though.

When we had x10 the licenses, all the Alaba producers thought we were making tens of millions of dollars (we were not) on YouTube, and they decided to sell me their shit and carve out their best stuff to compete with me. Directly. At that time, my earliest employees scattered throughout the land to try and create competition to beat NollywoodLove.
I guess they never really understood what we were trying to build with iROKOtv. The easy money is on YouTube. There are 50+ profitable channels (we track them all) and it is now so competitive and fierce it has essentially destroyed any value in the off YouTube advertising model. Hence it accelerated our position on making iROKOtv svod-only in 2012. It’s not just us. All the top YouTube channels I am sure realised what I realised in 2011. That paid content pays better over time. But boy is it expensive.

Vision 2020

For me the future is fraught with competition on all fronts; existing PayTV operators, current media groups, telcos are all vying for the iROKO crown. We are quietly confident and having operated in this environment for the last 3 years, we have made and institutionalised the mistakes that others will have to make to earn their stripes in svod land. We embrace them to share our pains. But we must remain focused and paranoid.

Our values still remain the same.

Be Bold.
Be Customers.
Be Fast.
Be Honest.
Be Amazing.

The vision remains the same. 1m subscribers by 2020. If we can reach that number then iROKO will be a billion dollar company. Simple. $1Bn. That’s what I believe Nollywood, Nigeria and West Africa deserves. A billion dollar media and technology company. We curate and export Nigerian culture globally. The industry now needs us as much as we need them.

It is only now we are focusing our entire energy on Africa. We are essentially distorting the entire company around what represents a mere 7% of our subscribers and revenue today. By 2020 we expect that to be north of 70%. We have to build that reality. Otherwise it can never happen.
iROKOtv.com is 3 years old. For that I am grateful to still be in the game.

This article was written by Jason Njoku, the co-founder and CEO of iROKOtv. You can follow him on Twitter @jasonnjoku