irokotv has hit hit five years and expects to be revenue positive in 2017 after surviving the launch of Netflix in the country and allegations of mismanagement late 2015.
“Five years ago, we set out to build a dedicated community for Nollywood online. For 3.5 of those years, we didn’t realise what that really, really meant. Over the last 18 months, as I led the transformation of irokotv into a product, design and engineering-focused organisation, I now have the team and the tools to create that community,” posted Jason Njoku the firm’s CEO in a blog post.
According to Njoku, irokotv still remains the biggest budget buster and employer across the group even though it was an offshoot of IROKO. The firm expects to grow massively in 2007 and is set to hire an additional 230-people to join its 100+ staff based at its Lagos HQ.
By 2020, Jason says irokotv has a road map to triple the number of channels and / or countries where it’s present today to make it the most broadly distributed and widely watched Nollywood channel group, globally.
“We will always be susceptible to short term pains as we remain in rapid investment mode, but at core, I have never felt better about the future. We should end up 80–100% group revenue growth in FYI ’17. We have the ingredients to double again FYI ’18,” he said. ”We expect to be cashflow positive across the group in 2017.”‘
Though people see IROKO as one company, Jason says the IROKO Group is a collection of 8 companies, 5 of which are profitable. Jason is banking on IROKO’s first vertical NollywoodLove (now IrokoX), a Multi-Platform Network [MPN] that provides a framework and platform for aspiring African stars of the future such as filmmakers, musicians, and other creative aspirants to produce, distribute, and monetize short-form content (3-5min content), as the future, able to rake in both $$ and users across the board.
