Wednesday 24 July 2013

Apple acquires HopStop from Nigerian entrepreneur Chinedu


Successful online city transit guide  HopStop.com has been acquired by Apple, reports CP-Africa. The company was founded in 2005  by Nigerian tech entrepreneur Chinedu Echeruo.

HopStop.com, which is available for both iOS and Android, covers more than 300 cities and allows users to get directions or find nearby subway stations and bus stops.
“HopStop has often been compared to Israel’s Waze which was recently acquired by Google for $1.1 billion. The move is seen as Apple’s plan to bolster its map offering especially given Google’s recent acquisition of Waze,” reports CP-Africa.
Chinedu grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended King’s College in Lagos before heading to the United States to attend Syracuse University and then Harvard Business School. Echeruo  came up with the idea for HopStop.com after working for several years in the Mergers and Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase.
At Morgan Chase he was involved in a broad range of M and A, Financing and Private Equity transactions.
As an entrepreneur, he raised nearly $8 million for launch two U.S-based internet companies–Hopstop.com and Tripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired in 2010 by Rand McNally, reports CP-Africa.
Chinedu is currently a partner and head of the Principal Investing group at Constant Capital, a West Africa-based investment bank.
A serial entrepreneur, Echeruo is already working on another venture, this one  focused on small businesses in Africa.  “There is no reason why every entrepreneur should have to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa,” he told Bloomberg. “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.”

 

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