How Nigerian, Chinedu Echeruo made $1bn from sale of apps firm to Apple...

Chinedu Echeruo, founder of HopStop.com is now $1 billion richer courtesy of the sale of his company to Apple. HopStop.com makes mobile applications for both iOS and Android that covers over 300 cities and helps people get directions or find nearby subway stations and bus stops.

With the sale, Echeruo is now the chairman of the Board for HopStop which has been compared to Israel’s Waze, recently acquired by Google for $1 billion but terms of the deal with Apple is yet to be disclosed. 

A former analyst at Investment Bank and Hedge Funds, Echeruo founded HopStop in 2005. He grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended Kings College, Lagos. He later proceeded to Syracuse University and the Harvard Business School in the United States and founded HopStop.com after working for several years in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase where he was involved in a broad range of M&A, Financing and Private Equity transactions. 

According Chinedu, ‘there is no reason for entrepreneur to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa. ‘My idea is to essentially 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.’...

-NET

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