As the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jason Njoku, 33, is the co-founder of iROKO Partners, an online media stream aiming at becoming the world’s largest distributor of African entertainment. The 2005 graduate of Chemistry from the University of Manchester, USA, told JOKE KUJENYA that since set-up over two years ago, the company is still working harder to build a global audience to reach more countries where it is yet to make a presence.
Management style?
I would say it is super in the sense that it is decentralised. We agree on key performance, sharing strategy in which we allow everyone to open up on what he or she is trying to do, how we are going to do it, then, determine which teams are going to figure out how what is going to get done. So, there is no kind of commander or controller or any hierarchy in which you would say there is one head of management. As you can see, we are very open, everyone can see everyone. And we keep communications cordial as much as possible.
The visionary?
The vision here, I would say, is not about one person. We share the vision amongst everybody a hundred percent. We spend a lot of time reinforcing our vision and we allow our staff to take initiatives on the vision as well. So, here it is not just “what Jason says” or “what Bastian Gotter says” or management. It is more about what each person thinks makes sense. We allow everyone to express themselves. And as you can see, it’s a two-and-a-half years old very young company. The team is on the first and the floor underneath. I am just in my early thirties, so, I’m not like a ‘dinosaur’ here. In fact, most of the people that work with me here are older.
Staff motivation?
We pay very well and we look after our staff. And we make this place safe, clean and healthy environment for the staff. In terms of motivation for their contributions, we make financial rewards available. As for individuals, we motivate them in the area of education, training, and we provide needed tools like internet connection available so they can equip themselves, not just at this company, but wherever they would be for the rest of their lives.
Staff strength?
Currently, we have about 110 staff in our offices here in Lagos, London, New York and Johannesburg, South Africa. We are currently looking at where we are to go next. But I think with our headquarters in Nigerians, our founding team are here, I guess I’m just like the ‘face’ in Nigeria. Bastian and I started the company together, really. And there were lots of helps from the beginning. Bastian actually spent the early years, whilst I was building, using his time helping me structure my ideas and providing that sound awareness around how to put the company together. Yes, he was partly with me for the first year, but every week, he would like 10 to 15 hours working through the business lines, profit and loss and setting strategies. I don’t think there has been any major decision made in this company from its founding day without my co-founder having a strong opinion observed. We’re a co-family all through.
Tough decisions?
Towards any process of making decisions, I think as a young company, to find your simple re-occurrence scalable revenue must be really very difficult. You know, to make a hundred thousand dollars a month is a very hard task. And we’ve passed that very long time ago. But to make the same amount a week, again, is even more difficult. Then, you have to bring getting a hundred thousand a week to how you can get same in a day, which is where you have the big scale issues. How can we build a company in a couple of years which is genuine even if you have that kind of opportunity? We are far away from being there. But we kind of believe that we stand a good chance. We have a great team, market opportunity, and a great team of investors who help to put us on the journey.
Personal motivation?
It’s like if you have a child, you want to see that child grow. You don’t want to think in terms of what that child would do to give you. You just think about this is my creation, this is an expression of my business personality, my team’s willingness to try and capture what should be like a massive kind of opportunity. We’re just two-and-a-half years like I said, but it’s been like we are 10 years old. We really start to look back and reflect and think on what we’ve been able to do and where we’ve reached. It’s very difficult for companies get beyond their fifth year, but we want to still be in the game and say, what more can we do.
Kind of business?
We bring people in to handle specific tasks that are kind of novel to Nigeria because it brings some sort of fresh creativity to help grow the economy so far. So, we get young and ambitious Nigerians who are very excited to be a part of this new wave of intelligence. And it’s really not a must that they be IT experts before we get them on board, like, I am not. So, it’s if you are young, smart, go-getting and willing to learn new things, you can basically do anything. Yes, we have traditionally technology savvy people that we are happy to be contributing to them. Each of them are doing amazing things as well as the wakanows of this section of the world.
Corporate philosophy?
The key thing for me is, you’ve got to be really smart. But if you are smart and not working really hard, you’ll end up nowhere. But if you are not that smart and you can still work really, really hard, you can actually end up quite successful. I’m very interested in honesty and integrity and hard work. You have to combine hard work with honesty. If you are working, work on the right things and if you are making mistakes and you are honest with that, you’ll be known for that. And with what I’ve seen in Nigeria so far, honesty in the workplace is super important.
Media background?
Yes. I’ve predominantly been a media guy. I started with offline BRASH magazines. I did that for three years. I also did online magazine. I’ve always been interested in the media. I’ve always tried to influence how people perceive the media and seek more efficient ways to bring media to the people. I think irokotv.com is just my personal evolution of how I view the media. It is the next step.
How iROKOtv’ functions?
What we need to think of here is, if you think about Africa Magic online, you have to place your subscription monthly. That’s the simplest way of explaining this. That gives you access to over 10,000 hours of Nigerian content at your own pleasure to enjoy. We have built a company which has most of our users or viewers in the west. We expect that would change over the next two years. And we have to position ourselves for that massive change. There are so many things we’re planning to do in the nearest future would help position us significantly more in our world. But the fear is, people want content and that’s very difficult to get in Nigeria, at least legally. We’re trying to create a platform which encourages and enables that. We do this as the largest buyers of Nollywood contents online because we believe it is a cultural phenomenon. Our focus is that something so popular must have a presence online. We buy the online licences of movies and music directly from producers and recording artists and stream them online to our global Diaspora audience. We’ve also assembled the world’s largest online library of great African content which has inadvertently made us West Africa’s top emergent Internet company. We promote African movies, music and messages as sent out by Africans to other Africans in different parts of the universe.
Clienteles’ response?
Pretty much from the international end, but mostly, they are those who have good internet facilities and are themselves, good with the internet. It is compulsory for those that would enjoy our services have great internet. We put ourselves in a situation where if you don’t have good internet, you will not have to access these contents. So, we are making ourselves as much as possible to prop up our Nollywood and we are doing everything possible to improve that situation.
The profits?
Honestly, we’re not making profits yet. We’re still investing and re-investing. And we’re still going to have a few years of investment before we would get near that goal of being profitable. We’re making a sort of tough choices today for a brighter future. We also try to be as cost effective as possible with our services. Basically, that’s where we are.
Any plans on a TV stations?
We’re not going into traditional TV setting. We feel that in time, viewers would come on line to get great quality image resolutions and content.
Nigeria’s digital TV idea?
For me, that’s ultimately a great concept. I think it’s really cool that Nigeria’s thinking of going digital. It’ll open up more channels to reach more people and give them fresh mixes and contents. A time is coming when where we are now will no longer be fashionable. I’m really excited about thinking of an opportunity to be a 110percent digital.
Next five years?
Yeah, we’re going to be here and bigger in business. I’m absolutely sure about that. It’s just like the same way 20, 30 years ago, when they placed TV on satellite, it was a new idea. Now, we’re starting something that will be more relevant beyond five years.
Connectivity hassles?
It’s tough. Infrastructure is very limited in Nigeria here. We would have thought it would improve ten years ago. GSMs weren’t even available. That was an impossible. But we’re quite hopeful that the connectivity will improve because there’s really been a lot of invested into this. We’re waiting for that day when connectivity will be much better than what it is at the moment. I have no doubt about seeing that happening.
