Get Creative,That Job You Seek Might Not Be Your Destiny:Apple Inc.Buys Nigerian Born Chinedu Echeruo’s Hopstop.com For $1 Billion

Happy day everybody...hope you are chilling well,I recently heard of a story of a man Brian Action by name who was turned down by alot of company,even by facebook when he was looking for job.

This same man went on an cofounded Whatsapp and can you believe that the same facebook that rejected this man was also the same facebook that bought his company whatsapp for a whooping $19billion.

Now comes a Nigerian born Chinedu Echeruo who also that built a company,that was eventually bought by Apple.com for around a sum of $1billion.If you are still there carrying your certificate up and down my dear that might not be your destiny,I guess God has something bigger than just a pay job in stock for you.

Try something different from looking for a job,possibly start a company...Brain Action,Chinedu Echeruo and a whole others started their one day.

Now read about Chinedu Echeruo,

Apple has acquired Chinedu Echeruo’s HopStop.com, The Wall Street Journal’s publication,

AllThingsDigital reports. Founded in 2005, HopStop.com makes mobile applications for both iOS and Android that covers over 300 cities and that helps people get directions or find nearby subway stations and bus stops. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed as at the time of this publication.

Chinedu Echeruo, formerly an analyst at investment banks and hedge funds founded HopStop in 2005.

Echeruo is now Chairman of the Board for HopStop.

HopStop has oft been compared to Israel’s Waze which was recently acquired by Google for $1 billion. The move is seen as Apple’s plan to bolster its map offering especially given Google’s recent acquisition of Waze.

A serial entrepreneur, Chinedu Echeruo grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended Kings College, Lagos. He attended Syracuse University and the Harvard Business School in the United States and founded HopStop.com after working for several years in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase where he was involved in a broad range of M&A, Financing and Private Equity transactions.

He also worked at AM Investment Partners, a $500 million volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund.

He founded and raised nearly $8 million for his two U.S based internet companies; Hopstop.com and Tripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired in 2010 by American travel and navigation information company, Rand McNally. He was named Black Enterprise Magazine’s Small Business Innovator of the year and listed in the magazine’s Top 40 under 40 and is currently a partner and head of the Principal Investing group at Constant Capital, a West Africa based investment bank.
True to form, Echeruo is working on yet another venture but this time, focused on small businesses in Africa. Check out a video of Chinedu Echeruo below at last year’s TedxIkoyi where he talks about his latest project for small businesses in Africa; “crowd sourced business in a box.”

According to him:
“There is no reason why every entrepreneur should have to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa. My idea is to essentially to have one place where a budding entrepreneur can access a template for starting a business, and then customize it to suit their own situation. Essentially a business-in-a-box.”

Success Can Come at Any Age. Just Look at These 6 Successful Entrepreneurs.

 Based on the way startups are covered in the media today, it’s easy to feel like all founders are in their teens or 20s. Stories abound of young millionaires and entrepreneur teenagers, but that’s only part of the picture. There are plenty of entrepreneurs out there who found their “big ideas” later in life, founding companies that, in some instances, last well beyond their years.

Here are six entrepreneurs who got their start later in life and prove that success is a possibility at any age:

1. Leo Goodwin, GEICO

GEICO, or the Government Employee’s Insurance Company, is now a well-known car insurance brand with well-known advertising figures. But before the Gecko, the Caveman or Maxwell, GEICO was the idea of Leo Goodwin. Working as an accountant in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1930’s, Goodwin realized that insurance needed an overhaul. Why weren’t companies just dealing with customers directly, saving all the money that traditionally went to brokers?

In 1936, at the age of 50, Leo founded GEICO in Washington, D.C. In a departure from most businessmen of the day, he worked closely with his wife Lillian in running the company. By the end of the year, GEICO had 12 people on staff and 3,700 policies in force. Today, GEICO employs over 27,000 people and has over 14 million policyholders.

2. Harland David Sanders, Kentucky Fried Chicken

Col. Sanders did not start out as anyone’s idea of a successful businessman. He lost his father at an early age, quarreled extensively with his stepfather, and was fired from multiple jobs, even losing his job as a lawyer after a courtroom brawl with his own client. However, he was determined to never give up, and this trait led to his eventual success.

While working at a service station in Corbin, Ky., Sanders gained local popularity for his delicious chicken recipe. After the Corbin station was destroyed by a fire, Sanders had the location rebuilt as a motel and 140-seat restaurant. In 1952, at the age of 62, Sanders franchised his “Kentucky Fried Chicken” for the first time. Today, KFC has over 18,800 outlets in 118 different countries and territories.

3. Robert Noyce, Intel

After earning his doctorate in physics from MIT, Robert Noyce found work as a research engineer, eventually ending up at Beckman Instruments. In 1957, he and seven others left Beckman and founded the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation. While he enjoyed some success there, he eventually left with Gordon Moore. Together, they founded Intel when Noyce was 41.

Noyce was considered the visionary of the company and treated staff like family. He declined the lavish benefits that most CEOs received, and kept the company less structured and more relaxed. While at Intel, he oversaw the invention of the microprocessor, an innovation that revolutionized computer technology and forms the foundation of the machines we still use today.

4. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn

Surely a company like LinkedIn, a major social network, was founded by a youngster, right? Not at all! Reid Hoffman struggled with what to do after he graduated from Stanford. He decided to work, but to do so strategically, mapping out a plan of what he would need to learn before he started his own company.

When he first started on his own, he founded a networking site called Socialnet, believing that having a great matching algorithm would guarantee success. He tried advertising his new site through magazines and newspapers, but never found traction with the idea. In the end, he left and joined PayPal before leaving his position with the company in 2002 to co-found LinkedIn. Hoffman was 35 when he founded the company and 43 when it went public.

5. Wally Blume, Denali Flavors

If the thought of tomato-flavored ice cream turns your stomach, you’re not alone. Wally Blume had a successful 20-year career, but knew he had to move on when his boss decided to move forward with that crazy idea. In 1995, in his mid-50s, he started his own ice cream company, Denali Flavors, where he created the famous Moose Tracks flavor.

Today, this dairy treat brings in $80 million a year alone through licensing agreements. Denali now has over 40 flavors, and Blume is still going strong at the age of 70.

6. Carol Gardner, Zelda Wisdom

When you’re 52, newly divorced, broke and depressed, you’d think that the last thing on your mind would be starting a company. Then again, it might be just what the doctor ordered.

After getting a dog at her therapist’s recommendation, Carol Gardner won a local Christmas card contest with a picture of the dog and a funny quip. The win inspired Gardner to start a greeting card company, which she named after her dog, Zelda. In 2010, Zelda Wisdom was valued at roughly $50 million, showing that you truly never know where your next great idea might come from.

Running a business isn’t easy -- it takes hard work and discipline to reach success. As a result, it should be unsurprising that, many times, it’s the older and wiser among us who are better at navigating that road. So don’t count yourself out, no matter what your age. Success can come to anyone at any time.

Do you have story to tell about a business you started later in life? Share it below in the comments section below!

 Culled From Entrepreneur.com

How to Stand Out from the Crowd- Excellence! With Pastor Sam Adeyemi

Excellence is the possession of good quality in an unusual degree. As God’s ambassadors, we must represent him accurately. Excellence is doing things right. But before we consider how to do it right, lets ensure we are doing the right thing. Excellence in the wrong thing still spells failure.

DEFINE YOUR ASSIGNMENT

You cannot just be efficient for efficiency’s sake. We must also be effective. Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things. Defining your assignment is the starting point for you to achieve excellence. State clearly your vision in life or the vision of your organization. This defines the limit of the areas in which to achieve excellence as a person or organization.

DEAL WITH OLD MINDSETS

Some people say that you have to choose between quality and quantity. This is not true because the more quality you have, the more quantity you attract. The more you do things better, the more you will be patronized.

There is another myth that says you must have large amounts of money before you can achieve excellence. The truth is, you need excellence to attract a large amount of money. If you will improve on the quality of what you are doing, your customers will increase; this translates into more money for you. Do not ask,

“What will this cost us?” Rather ask, “What will it cost us if we do not do it?””

WHY EXCELLENCE IS A MUST

Things are changing around us every day. A person or organization that is outdated cannot be relevant to a contemporary world. If you are still making use of your old manual typewriter when you are supposed to be doing your work with great speed on a computer, it may mire a lot of things. We must endeavor to up-date ourselves with new technologies.

Excellence motivates, especially in an underdeveloped environment like ours. We should inspire the people around us by our actions. Our organizations should be places of inspiration. What is that unique thing you have or your organization has that can inspire other people?

Striving for excellence shows people that we are serious about our assignment i.e. what we are doing and encourages them to want to be part of it. No matter how small a thing looks, if you have invested quality thoughts in it, people tend to appreciate and identify with it. Great works are a result of deep thoughts.

Like begets like. Excellence attracts good quality; human, financial and material resources. For example if you work in a bank and that bank is known for excellent customer service, i.e. within five minutes a customer has been attended to; people tend to flock to such banks. The same goes for supermarkets, salons, and various companies.

Life is progressive and not stagnant. We have to jog to maintain our position. If we remain stagnant, we risk failure. There is no pride in failure. We must appreciate excellence wherever it is found. Excellence attracts.

We must strive for it. This is one of the keys to success in life.

If you run an organization, then make it an excellence-oriented organization. Look for ways to continually improve quality in services offered, events and your facilities.

AREAS OF IMPROVEMENTS

Communication – i.e. your advert materials must portray excellence.

Customer service – when a service is good, one person tells a maximum of 5 people. But when the services are bad, one person tells 20 people. Now only 4% come back to complain but the remaining 96% speak with their feet.

Creativity- your staff must keep churning in ideas about how to do things in a better way.

Staff trainings – staffs should be exposed to world class improvement programmes for better performance. It is vital to keep learning.

Facilities- The organization’s facilities reveal what we value and reflect our self-image. Therefore, the excellence-oriented organization must thrive for excellence in the following areas:

The painting of the facilities and landscaping of the environment. Keep the plants and grasses well trimmed and all directional signs freshly painted.

The environment should be well lit, has comfortable seating arrangements and the temperature should be well managed with a cooling system.

The rest rooms should be clean. Visitors may forget what you say but not the memory of a foul-smelling restroom.

The appearance of staffs says a lot about your organization’s priority for excellence.

The excellence-oriented organization invests money in what people can see. Human beings are generally motivated and affected by what they see.

Excellence is more of a process than a product; a journey, not a destination. We should not make excellence a one- time goal. The key is never to stop learning. When you stop learning, you stop growing. Upgrade from time to time.

You will Succeed!

Sam Adeyemi

How This Couple Grew This Mighty Food Outlet,Tantalizers Into One Of Nigeria Fastest Growing Fast Food Chain

Folu & Bose Ayeni are co-founders of Tantalizers, Nigeria’s fastest growing fast food chain with Folu Ayeni, CEO of Tantalizers. In 1997 when they produced the blueprint for their business, Ayeni and his wife, Bose, knew the odds were against them. Raising the start-up capital of N2.5 million seemed a wishful thought, going by the reputation of Nigerian banks in giving loans to business start ups. They were not disappointed. Banks shut their doors on them, but they held unto their dream. Today, these same banks spruce up their sweet-talking business executives and send them after Ayeni, offering all kinds of financial support.

At the beginning, when they took their proposal to their bankers, their bankers told them they did not finance such businesses. They never gave up hope. They persisted until the then Prudent Bank (now Skye Bank) decided to take a chance on their dreams. This paid of handsomely.

Today, Tantalizers has more than 30 outlets nation-wide and are now looking beyond Nigeria. We plan to expand to the West Coast, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

The husband and wife team run Tantalizers, which is low listed in the Nigerian Stock market as a public limited liability company. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), and arm of the World Bank in February 2010 granted $7Million in loans and took $1.5Million equity in Tantalizers to help take the company to the next level. This will be used to upgrade about 15 outlets and build more new outlets. From looking for a N2.5million start up capital in 1997, the husband and wife team has grown a company which has become a national brand and institution in Nigeria.
——————————————————————————————————-
The Tantalizer Story

My grandma sold rice, mum sold rice, and I also do because my teacher advised me to stick to family business…

“In my final year in the business school, there was this lecturer some of us asked what kind of business to go into after graduation.

“Because we had this fantastic MBA certificate, he looked at us and smiled, saying “if you are not Bill Gates, if you have not invented something that you can patent immediately, I will advise you to go into a business that your mother or father did successfully. Now apply your newly acquired knowledge from the MBA class and make it a better business. That was the opening comment of Mr. Folu Ayeni, Managing Director Tantalizers Nigeria Limited in a discussion.

That is why today I am selling rice and beans. My mother sold rice, my grand mother sold rice and so I am selling rice. So don’t go into business unless you have competitive advantage. That is what you have and other people don’t have and that becomes your strong point.

When we started Tantalizers, we invested N2.5 million and information at my disposal from our auditors is that our gross profit is about N4 billion for the financial year which will be published in few weeks time, but how much did we invest in the business when we started?

It is usual for SMEs to blame the infrastructure, the lack of knowledge on feasibility study, the banks and a host of other things considered to be limitations.

Ayeni said, I have seen a lot of Small and Medium Scale Entrepreneurs (SMEs) go down with wonderful ideas, just because of the short sight limitations. Limitations of finance, collateral etc. and what I want to tell such people is that: You don’t win a lottery by wishing, you win lottery by first buying the ticket, like every other person that is expecting a win. You might or might not win but the first step is to buy the ticket.

SME Operators

I am not going to blame the governments over lack of infrastructure, or the banks for lack of finance options for the SMEs, though I still have an ongoing battle with the banks. No doubt, the government is not making anything easy for the SME. Take a look at the state of the infrastructure in the country, which is in the worst possible way.

What are the goals of the SME operator in Nigeria, what are the responsibilities an SME operator needs to take up to be successful? The Nigerian entrepreneur; is just like a goal keeper who was asked why did you allow so much balls into the net, his response was “ “whenever the opposing side striker shoots the ball towards the net, the ball turns to three balls and I don’t know which one to catch and that is why we were defeated with so large a margin.

The coach now responds that: “if you had just caught just one of the three balls, we will be able to register it. That there were actually three balls and two landed in the net while the keeper was able to catch one of them and here is the evidence but now that you have caught none, your story sounds unbelievable. That is just the way a typical Nigerian entrepreneur paints the challenges facing his or her success.

But if you play your role properly as an SME operator then you are probably going to end up succeeding, and that will enable us to focus on the bank and the government who are not playing their roles adequately in developing the SME project in Nigeria.

Tantalizers’ Experience

The Tantalizers’ experience is real because I went through the mill. What I am going to say is not something I got from one SME bookshelf, but practical life experience. The summary of it all is that we survived by the grace of God. It was not everything I know now that I knew then. If I had known half of what I know now things would have been much easier.

Go and start, don’t talk about finance, start first and everything starts with an idea. Money in most cases follows good idea and that is the reason you must start first. Don’t wait until you are sure of a loan without collateral. If you are waiting for that you may never start anything.

Selecting Business

Look into your environment, look at what you can do that is very good, a lot of people choose a line of business just because they saw somebody succeeding in that line of business and they join the fray without knowing what actually is going on in the business. You see somebody establish business and you don’t know if it is financed with money from 419 deals, you also open a similar business. The objective is not to make profit but to launder money, so you must first know and understand the business you want to start.

Do an objective appraisal of the business and know if is it easy to start the business, and extent of capital needed. I know someone who wanted to start a consultancy outfit, he came to Victoria Island to hire an apartment and furnished it to taste without a single client, and six months later he was bankrupt because he had no single client to call a customer. He could not get a single consultancy job to do and all his investment went down the drain.

He failed because before the business started he had a bloated overhead which the business cannot sustain. As an SME, start small and don’t build unnecessary overhead into your budget. Allow one person to play several roles. When we started my wife was the managing director and the production manager. She wakes up about 5am to go to Mile 12 to buy tomatoes and other raw materials. She will be back in Festac before 8 am, then we will prepare the meal, get to the cash point and by 9 pm she will do the account. Those days we made about N11, 000 everyday.
Subsequently, we started putting in structures though crude and rudimentary.

Plan Growth

If you are successful in one outlet then you must build another, but look before you leap. That you are successful in one area does not translate to automatic success in another area, so there is need to plan for what you are going to do. This is where wisdom is necessary. If you are opening business in a new location you must look at the business environment from the angle of your strength and weakness there. If your weakness outweighs your strength and you must be there, then you must strategies on how to penetrate the market or you may run into problem.

Buy Expertise

You can’t know everything or do everything. You cannot do the job of four persons. The major problem of the SME is keeping proper account books. We clocked 10 last year and it is still one of our problems. We get accounting software and people don’t still know how to use it, rudimentary bookkeeping for some SMEs is not there. All they do is sell some and consume some of the product they sell and there is no way you can break even like that. Start the business and put yourself on a salary from the out set. Separate your finances from the finances of the business.

Checking Fraud

You have to lead from the front. If you don’t want your workers to steal from you as the owner of the business, don’t steal from yourself. Do you know that some people steal from their own company? It is simple. When you ask your procurement manager to inflate the cost of importing your products and at the end of the day your staffers decided to sell part of the product because its not moving and you are annoyed, why are you annoyed you have already stolen, so if others are stealing they are just following your example. Once you lead from the front then you would have succeeded in establishing a culture and the culture wil transcend the whole organisation

Reference:Sun Newspaper Sept 2008

Raymond Dokpesi – Daar Communications, AIT's Story

Born on 25th October 1951 at Ibadan, Oyo State, to the Dokpesi family from Agenebode in Edo State he attended Ebenezer African Church School, Ekotedo, Ibadan; Loyola College, Ibadan; Wyzsza Szkota Morska Gdynia, Poland; and University of Gdansk Sopot, Poland. Born without a silver spoon, Dokpesi started early in life when he had to help his mother sell rice and dodo at the age of 16.

As a pioneer student of the present University of Benin, then Midwest Institute of Technology (MIT), it was difficult to raise the initial 10 pounds loan to deposit as tuition fees. The Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, gave him a scholarship to a Polish university.

With a first class Bachelor of Science degree in Marine Engineering, a Master of Science degree in Marine Transport Engineering and a Doctor of Economic Science degree in Marine Transport Engineering Chief (Dr) Raymond Anthony Aleogho Dokpesi worked as an Assistant Lecturer at University of Gdansk Poland and had the dream of becoming a professor before he met Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who invited him back home in 1978. He then joined the Federal Ministry of Transport.

In 1984, he set up the African Ocean Lines with Chief M. K. O Abiola, General Shehu Musa Yar A’dua and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. In 1989 he resigned from the company to go solo. His venture into broadcasting when he discovered a gap in information dissemination in the process of his tour of local governments during a political campaign.

And so on on August 16, 1994, Ray Power 100.5 FM was born. In April 1999 a second channel, Ray Power 2, 106.5 FM commenced operation, before then African Independent Television was already on air. AIT on 20th September 2004 launched it’s satellite television network United States of America.

A pioneer, Raymond Dokpesi, chairman of Daar Communications is the first Nigerian to start a private shipping company and the first individual to own television station. The initial funding came from Daar Investment Holding Company, the founder, Chief Dokpesi and a consortium of banks led by Union Bank Plc.

It was not an easy for the communication house, as it has to wait for six years after incorporation to start operating. Also the Sani Abacha regime closed the station down almost immediately after it opened it doors. Then in 2000 the consortium of banks decided to withdraw from its original agreement of financing the station. In 2003 its Abuja office was also gutted by a mysterious fire.

AIT is now viewed across many states of the federation. AIT International transmits throughout the continent of Africa, throughout the Mediterranean, the Americas as a whole, the Caribbean and Europe. AIT is listed in the Nigerian Stock market.

This Is Super Story:How Cosmas Maduka of Coscharis Group Moved From Being An Underage Apprentice to A Multi-Billionaire

In today’s Nigeria, the name Cosmas Maduka is synonymous with Coscharis Motors. And why wouldn’t it be since the bearer of the name is the multi-billionaire Chairman/CEO of Coscharis Group of Companies and sole distributor for BMW in Nigeria.

Dr. Cosmas Maduka’s success is one that everyone knows of, but let’s go through his journey to success together.

Cosmas was born in Nnewi in Anambra State into poverty. At age four, he lost his father and had to resort to hawking bean cake (Akara) and climbing palm trees before the age of five, to assist his mother. Three years later, when things seemed to get worse instead of better, he was sent by his mother to his maternal grandparents in order to lessen her task of providing for him and her other three children. At age seven, little Cosmas was withdrawn from Elementary Three to serve as an automobile apprentice to a maternal uncle in Lagos.

Talking about this, he says “My maternal uncle lived at Ebutte-Metta in Lagos and had a store at 88 Griffy Street, near Oyingbo Bus-stop. He took me to work as an apprentice for him, and people laughed at me and questioned what I could learn at my age.

The uncle Cosmas was to learn from had no home of his own but was squatting with a friend, hence, Cosmas had to sleep at the store while his uncle locked him in and went home with the keys to the store.

Cosmas was born into the Catholic faith, however, he had deserted the faith as a young man. He was later to find back his Christian faith when a friend invited him to the Redeemed Christian Church of God at Ebutte-Metta while still in Lagos. It was here he found again his Christian faith and was not ready to let it go again.

The answer to those who doubted Cosmas’ ability to learn the trade was that at age nine, he had effectively mastered his craft and would, on behalf of his Uncle, travel alone to Nnewi to purchase items. At the age of 14, his boss was so confident in his abilities that he sent him to work in one of their branches at Sokoto and later, at Nnewi, where he was born.

All through this time, there was no contract binding himself and his Uncle together. This was later going to cause a fatal setback for him, or the launch pad into his success, depending on how you look at it.
 

In 1975, while still at Nnewi at the age of 14, Cosmas had a church camp he had to attend. His boss came into town on the fourth day and on discovering his absence, sent for him and his elder brother. Upon their arrival, he gave him N200, asking him to go concentrate on his new found faith. That was how his service in the employ of his Uncle was terminated.

Talking about the event, Cosmas recalls “It was done to punish me, but having known a little about God, I looked at him in the eyes and said, `God hardened the heart of Pharaoh to show His might in the land of Egypt. I served you well, and I don’t deserve this. But if this is what you have to offer me, five years from today, you will be amazed at what you’re going to see out of this”, he painfully recalls.

With this setback, Cosmas embraced a positive attitude. Talking about this, he says, “I’ve always been very positive from my childhood and this often made people laugh at me to scorn. I still recollect those days at Oyingbo Bus-stop when school children would mock me, and I would tell them I was going to be better than them in six years. I do not know why I was so confident, but the truth is that my mother inspired and encouraged me always.”

After his dismissal from his Uncle’s employ, Cosmas teamed up with his elder brother who had concluded his apprenticeship and was ready to set up a company, Maduka Brothers, selling spare parts. This partnership was not to last as they later had to part later due to ideological differences, leaving him with a capital of N300.

It was with this capital that he started his own enterprise of coming to Lagos to buy goods. He had his first breakthrough when he went to Boulous Enterprises to purchase motorcycle spare parts. It was here that he stumbled on a new innovation called motorcycle crash ban. He bought several of this and then removed the address of Boulous from the carton so that others would not know where he bought them from.

Recalling the incident, Cosmas says“I sold everything the next day and joined the night bus again to Lagos to buy more. I did that four times in one week and my capital rose from N300 to over N3,000. I settled down in marriage at age 19, and I ventured into importation with the little capital I had. Lo and behold, I received the wrong consignment and therefore, had a serious setback which left me indebted even to my landlord for months. My shop was also locked.”

This major setback notwithstanding, Cosmas was willing to start over, hence, he searched out a scale which he got as a wedding gift, took it to the market, and from everyone who climbed it, he got 10kobo. Upon knowing what her husband went out to do each day, his wife cried and then decided to pick up a job to support the family.

With proceeds from the scale enterprise, he was able to team up with a friend, David and they set up a company called CosDave. His partnership with David also had to end due to ideological differences which led him to finally set up the popular Coscharis Motors, now Coscharis Group of Companies. Speaking on the idea for the name, Cosmas says “Coscharis is a combination of three letter words from my name and that of my wife, Charity.”

For Coscharis, the real breakthrough came when in 1982, the Nigerian government decided to grant import licenses to 10 Nigerian companies and Coscharis was one of those selected. From then up till now, the company has continued to expand, and as of date has several subsidiaries.

From his experience, Cosmas advises: “You can start any mean job as a stepping stone to where you want to be.”

We can also glean this one lesson that it isn’t about where you start from, but where you end up. 

Reference:CP Africa

How Deji Akinyanju Built Chicken Republic From Scratch To A Multi-Billion Naira Business

After 16 years in the United Kingdom, Deji Akinyanju returned home to found one of Nigeria’s most successful food retailers.“I felt driven to go back and make an impact,” he said on his decision to return home.”It was at the time of transition from military rule to democracy and I wanted to help build an entrepreneurial private sector.”

Today, 42 year old Akinyanju heads one of Nigeria’s fastest growing retail chains valued at about $120 million. With about $2 million (N320 million) in seed funding raised from family and friends, he initially had a franchise deal with Chicken Licken, South Africa but quickly established his own brand Chicken Republic. In 2003, he opened a bakery outlet, Butterfield Bakery (a South African brand), which soon became Nigeria’s largest bakery. Deji also own Reeds Thai Restaurant in Lagos and the St. Elmos Pizza franchise in Nigeria.

According to him, “we revolutionised the concept of buying international brands into Nigeria. Ever since then, new brands have come into the market. And we set the standard, changed the eating experience for Nigerians and introduced a friendlier, world-class ambience into food.”

He says that the market is being driven by the youth. “They want to associate themselves with modern brands and modern ways of eating.”

Since founding Chicken Republic he has grown it to over 70 outlets. When asked by CNBC earlier this year on how his business ventures became successful, he said, “When I started, I didn’t have much experience. If you have passion, the rest is easy to learn, but you can’t teach somebody to be passionate.”

However, success came with its burdens and challenges. In the early years, his company acquired quite a bit of debt to fund its expansion. “We had a strong cash flow but we also had obligations to banks and the business wasn’t profitable. We spent a lot servicing our debt.”  In 2008, his company raised an additional $30 million to finance its expansion plans.

 

According to him, “There is still no strong brand across West Africa, so for instance if you were to go to Ghana you will find three stores run by a particular brand and if you were to go Ivory Coast, you may not find that brand in Ivory Coast, so we have this entire West coast market.”

Deji eventually plans to open three hundred Chicken Republic stores in Nigeria and a thousand Chicken Republic stores in Africa before 2013.

“Nigerian brands want to be global brands,” he says. “And why not? We have a lot of foreign brands in our market. If you apply the right principles, it doesn’t matter where you come from— you should be able to fly anywhere.”

“We strongly believe that with all the tools, in funding and human resources, and proper backing in business, we certainly can do 300 to 500 stores in this country, because we see that there is a younger population, we all know that we have may be 70 percent of our population under the ages of 18, and is a growing population, a lot more people are eating out, so that cultural change is happening daily.”

This year, Food Concepts (parent company of his food retail brands) signed a $20 million investment deal with the International Finance Corporation (the IFC), to improve its safety and corporate standards, and to expand into Ghana.

In true entrepreneur style, despite his many ventures, Deji this year ventured into chicken farming, opening a chicken farm 200km out of Lagos. He aims on becoming the country’s largest poultry distributor. “There is an unbelievable shortage of chicken in the country,” he says. “The Nigerian market is three times as big as South Africa’s yet South Africa’s largest chicken factories produce 3 million birds a week. In Nigeria it is just 100,000.”

Reference...CP Africa