Jason Njoku was yesterday confirmed as an official Growth Ambassador for the Alternative Securities market (ASeM), a specialised board for listing small and mid-sized companies with high growth potential and is part of the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Njoku, CEO and co-founder of iROKO Partners, started his business in 2010, streaming Nollywood movies for free. Today, with irokotv.com, his company is the world’s largest distributor of African movies online, with over one million unique visits each month, and he has since been voted as one of Forbes’ ‘Ten Young African Millionaires to Watch’.
He was nominated as a Growth Ambassador, thanks to his track record in building a successful, global Nigerian tech company and promoting business best-practice. At only 32 years-old, he is the youngest member of the Growth Ambassador programme for the ASeM and will be working with advisors to look at how Nigeria’s young, budding entrepreneurs, notably in the technology and Internet sphere, can access funding and mentorship from business veterans and investors.
On joining the ASeM Growth Ambassador programme, Jason Njoku says: “It is a huge honour to be recognized by the Nigerian Stock Exchange for my work within Nigeria’s business and technology sector and I Iook forward to starting an immediate dialogue on how we can collectively encourage and support the young Nigerian entrepreneurs of the future.
“Believe me, there are a lot of very smart young men and women out there who have awesome ideas and are desperate to start their own company, but too many fall at the first hurdle because they cannot access funding or navigate the bureaucracy of starting a business here.
“Today was about fostering the spirit of entrepreneurialism in Nigeria’s SME market and the coming months and years for both the ASeM and myself will be extremely interesting”.
The ASeM launch, held The Muson Centre in Lagos on Tuesday April 23, was attended by dignitaries from the Nigerian Stock Exchange, including CEO Oscar Onyema, as well as representatives of the Nigerian Government, official business organisations and business entrepreneurs. Jason Njoku was also joined by the distinguished Mrs. Florence Seriki, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Omatek ventures Plc as an official ASeM Growth Ambassador.
