Apple Buys Nigerian Born Chinedu Echeruo’s Hopstop.com for $1 Billion!



Chinedu-Echeruo




*Looks like Dr. Dre has company in the billionaires club with Apple’s acquisition of Chinedu Echeruo’s HopStop.com.

African Leadership magazine via AllThingsDigital reports the Nigerian born serial entrepreneur sold the site for $1 billion. Terms surrounding the deal were not disclosed.

HopStop.com is known for making mobile applications for iOS and Android that cover over 300 cities. In addition the site helps people get directions or find nearby subway stations and bus stops.



A former analyst at investment banks and hedge funds, Echeruo, grew up in Eastern Nigeria. He attended Syracuse University and the Harvard Business School in the United States as well as Kings College, Lagos.
Professionally, Echeruo worked several years in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase, in addition to AM Investment Partners, a $500 million volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund, before founding HopStop.com in 2005. During his time at Chase, he became involved in various M&A, Financing and Private Equity transactions.
In addition to HopStop.com, Echeruo business endeavors included another U.S. based Internet company he founded, Tripology.com, which was acquired in 2010 by the American travel and navigation information company, Rand McNally. Prior to letting HopStop and Tripology go, Echeruo raised nearly $8 million for the both companies.

As it stands now, AllThingsDigital mentioned that Echeruo currently serves as Chairman of the Board for HopStop as well as a partner and head of the Principal Investing group at Constant Capital, a West Africa based investment bank.
According to the site, HopStop shares comparisons to Israel’s Waze, which was recently sold to Google for $1 billion. In light of Google’s acquisition of Waze, Apple’s purchase of HopStop is seen as an effort by the company to bolster its map offering.
While all of that is nice and good, Echeruo has already moved on to the next one as he is spending his time working on small businesses in Africa. The businessman, who was named Black Enterprise Magazine’s Small Business Innovator of the year and listed in the magazine’s Top 40 under 40, chatted about his latest project for small business in Africa, “crowd sourced business in a box.,” at last year’s TedxIkoyi

“There is no reason why every entrepreneur should have to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa.,” he said. “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.”

Read more at.eurweb.com

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