Friday, 20 May 2011 NEXT X2 3

Me e t J a s o n C h u k w u m a N j o k u , f o u n d e r

and CEO of Iroko Partners a n d No l l y wo o d L ove , a YouTube channel where popular Nollywood movies, both in Yoruba and English, can be watched full-length and without breaks. Iroko Partners takes an immensely popular movie, sanitises it, and digitizes the content before making it available for people on the popular online video file sharing website, YouTube.

The ideaN j o k u d i s c o v e r e d

Nollywood only recently, having been born in the United Kingdom and lived there until last September. In mid-2009, he noticed that his mum, aunts, uncles and friends had become somewhat fanatical about this phenomenon called Nollywood. There was a growing cultural movement a m o n g A f r i c a n s i n t h e Diaspora, who were more focused on their homeland values and entertainment, of which Nollywood is a conspicuous example.

Being a curious person, N j o k u e x p l o r e d t h e d i st r i b u t i o n m o d e l s f o r Nollywood movies, wanting to know how the industry gets its movies into its consumers’ eager hands, but the more he looked, the more he realised, amazingly, that there wasn’t any. More importantly, he discovered the obvious and glaring fact that the industry is buckling under the threat of piracy. When he sought out Nollywood videos on YouTube, all he found were short clips and 10-minute long extracts of full-length movies.

“I realised that there is a huge opportunity here because of Nollywood’s already proven popularity. All there is left to do is to slightly organise it and with a great partner like YouTube, we have been able to do this,” he explains.

Starting outFor a chemistry graduate

with no clue about what he was doing at first, the beginning

o f t h e No l ly wo o d L ove project proved to be pretty challenging. Njoku had no real experience handling digital files or formatting, he didn’t know how to make money from the content, much less price it, and negotiating legal documentation and organising himself and his small team was a logistical nightmare.

“It was a question of accepting I was mostly going to make mistakes and having the confidence, or stupidity, to believe most of them wouldn’t lead to the business’ failure,” he confesses.

“Capital, as always, is a problem for a fledgling business. This was a challenge in setting up as it was capital-intensive. We are negotiating and acquiring multi-year licensing deals alongside supporting a growing number of staff, with the obvious costs of getting fast internet connection and ensuring constant electricity supply,” he stated, highlighting some issues he had to deal with.

“However, looking on, the business has experienced such massive growth so quickly that getting capital isn’t really

a problem anymore,” Njoku says of his four-month-old enterprise.

Good ol’ GoogleN j o k u d i s c ove re d t h e

YouTube partnership program for businesses, a revenue-sharing program that allows creators and producers of original content to earn money from their popular videos on YouTube, and he approached them. For him, “YouTube is the biggest and most robust

video channel on the planet. It is our business; our business is literarily built on it,” he says.

“We don’t have problems with issues like streaming; we get traffic from 131 countries m o n t h ly. W h e reve r yo u are, you can access us, so far you have a good internet connection,” he points out.

Initially, he prioritised the idea of having a large database of movies and went ahead to secure the rights to over 500 movies chosen randomly, as opposed to finding out which

movies viewers would prefer.“At the beginning there was

no idea of which movies to buy as there are no statistics out there that showed anything of such,” he said.

Now, says Njoku, in order to determine the kind of movies to buy, the viewing and rating data are always given a critical look as the analytic evidence of 1.4 million monthly unique viewers gives Nollywood Love a clearer idea of the types of movies their subscribers want to watch.

Google supports Njoku’s business in other areas, including communication with his customers and the use of annotations to broadcast information. But it is the analytics service on the site, which provides data that can read and interpreted in various ways, which is key to Nollywood Love’s success. Through effective use of the technology available, Njoku’s team can interpret such minute data as how many times a viewer rewinds a part of a movie, in order to understand what is really important to their clients. This influences the types of movies whose licenses they will purchase.

I r o k o P a r t n e r s a n d Nollywood

Noticing that there are very few ways to get Nollywood movies off the shores of the African continent, Iroko Partners approached the major players in Nollywood and now legally buy and put their movies online. It turned out it to be a welcome opportunity for both parties to monetize the excitement and love for Nollywood.

“Putting the movies online helps the Nollywood industry to tap into the global audience they have undeniably created. Previously, internet piracy is rampant. It still is, but we are going a long way to control that tide. Iroko Partners is investing significant sums into Nollywood and have quickly become a great way for producers to make money off their back catalogue and newer releases.

“This market didn’t exist six months ago. [The online market] is important for those in far-flung places like Dubai, India or Russia, who obviously haven’t got ready local access to their beloved Nigerian cinema so Nollywood Love helps them connect with the homeland,” Njoku explains.

N j o k u’s p l a n f o r t h e i n d u s t r y g o e s b e y o n d making profits off the online consumption of Nollywood movies. On the contrary, he hopes, in the long run, to improve the distribution infrastructures and add value to the industry.

“Nollywood should be ten times bigger than what it currently is. The bottle neck is the distribution,” he points out. “We are looking to solve the global distribution issues. We are making a five-year minimum investment to support Nollywood to take its rightful place amongst the great cinema nations.”

By Funmilayo ajala

INNOVATIVE Njoku has opened new fronts for the distribution of home videos

Iroko Partners takes Nollywood online

“This markeT didn’T exisT 6 monThs ago. [The online markeT] is imporTanT for Those in far-flung places like dubai, india or russia, who obviously haven’T goT ready local access To Their beloved nigerian cin-ema. nollywood love helps Them connecT wiTh The homeland”

Jason Njoku with Nollywood actresses PHOTO COURTESY JASON NJOKU