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iROKO Partners

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iROKO Partners
Type of businessPrivate
FoundedLagos, Lagos State, Nigeria
No. of locationsLagos, London, New York City
Founder(s)Jason Njoku
IndustryInternet video and audio
ProductsiROKOtv, iROKING, NollywoodLove, YorubaLove & iROKtv
Employees110
URLhttp://www.irokopartners.com

iROKO Partners is an online media distribution company focused on the Nigerian entertainment industry.[1] The company was established in September 2010 and is headquartered in Lagos, with a branch in London, United Kingdom. The company is led by its co-founders Jason Njoku (CEO) and Bastian Gotter along with major investor Nazar Yasin. iROKO Partners offers a range of online media products including its movie streaming website named IROKOtv focused on Nollywood Film productions, and 'iROKING', a Nigerian music streaming platform.[2] Other web brands are NollywoodLove and YorubaLove which operate on the YouTube video platform.[3]

History

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iROKO Partners was founded in 2010 in London, England by Jason Njoku and Bastian Gotter.[4] The Idea was born out of the high and rapidly growing demand for Nollywood films. iROKO partners initially set out to rid both the internet and the industry from the vast amount of piracy which was crippling the industry; once established, the organization birthed Nollywoodlove and Yorubalove, which obtained a dominant share of local YouTube views in 2011.[3] Just four months into his business, Njoku had bought the online rights to 500 movies from 100 one-man production houses.[5]

The company is globally the largest licensor and the leading distributor of Nollywood movies (both English and Yoruba) online.[1] Tiger Global, a hedge fund run by an early investor in Facebook and Zynga, has invested $8 million into the company.[6] In 2012, iROKO Partners was the fastest-growing internet company in Nigeria, was YouTube's biggest African partner, and had distribution deals with Dailymotion, iTunes, Amazon and Vimeo.[6]

iROKING

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IROKING is a free Nigerian music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of African labels and artists.[7] Its website platform was launched in December 2011 by iROKO Partners.[8] Music can be browsed by direct searches, artist, album and playlists. The system is currently accessible using Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.[9]

Mobile application

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iROKING has mobile applications on the iOS, Android, Windows and Symbian (Nokia) mobile handsets.[10][11] The application allows access to thousand of the latest Nigerian tracks and stream songs over Wi-Fi or 3G.[7]

The iROKING mobile application's features include:

  • Favourite selected songs
  • Create playlists and share them via Twitter or Facebook
  • Integrated offline functionality (users can listen to favourite tunes offline)[10]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Tiger Global in $8m Iroko deal". Private Equity Africa. 2012-04-05. Archived from the original on 2012-04-14. Retrieved 2012-04-28.
  2. ^ Mfonobong Nsehe (2012-04-18). "Tiger Global Backs Nigerian Internet E Entrepreneur In $8 Million Round". Forbes. Retrieved 2012-04-28.[dead link]
  3. ^ a b Mundy, Simon (2011-11-22). "Iroko Partners: Demand proves insatiable for Nollywood on the net". FT.com. Retrieved 2012-04-28.
  4. ^ Mfonobong Nsehe (2012-04-18). "Nigerian Internet Entrepreneur Takes Nollywood To The World". Forbes. Retrieved 2012-04-28.
  5. ^ "You Think Hollywood Is Rough? Welcome to the Chaos, Excitement and Danger of Nollywood". TechCrunch. 2011-05-14. Retrieved 2012-04-28.
  6. ^ a b White, Garry (6 April 2012). "Facebook investor Tiger Global takes stake in Nollywood film distributor". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-04-28.
  7. ^ a b Mfonobong Nsehe (2012-04-18). "Tiger Global Backs Nigerian Internet Entrepreneur In $8 Million Round". Forbes. Retrieved 2012-06-03.
  8. ^ Brown, Ann (2012-04-27). "Jason Njoku Taking The West African Tech World By Storm | The Network Journal". Tnj.com. Archived from the original on 2012-06-08. Retrieved 2012-06-03.
  9. ^ Anibe Agamah. "iROKING, The New Home Of Nigerian Music Officially Launches". TechLoy. Archived from the original on 2012-06-07. Retrieved 2012-06-03.
  10. ^ a b Anibe Agamah. "iROKING Music App Comes To The Windows Phone (SCREENSHOTS)". TechLoy. Archived from the original on 2012-05-30. Retrieved 2012-06-03.
  11. ^ Anibe Agamah. "iROKING Android App Launches On The Google Play (BETA)". TechLoy. Retrieved 2012-06-03.
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