The image of Nigerians was smeared when the FBI arrested and later published the names of 77 Nigerians among those who were allegedly involved in cyber fraud related crimes. Nigerians and the government have spoken up and condemned the actions of the alleged fraudsters.
However, it is still important for Nigerians to assert and defend Nigerians’ integrity, insisting that although, there are few bad eggs, Nigerians are exceptionally hardworking people who use their talents to do good, break boundaries and set records, not only in Africa, but in the entire world.
Chief Superintendent of Police, Dolapo Badmus after condemning the action of the arrested fraudsters, calling for the full wrath of the law against them, shared the photo of Chinedu Echerue as an example of a true Nigerian.
Nigeria’s Chinedu Echeruo is the one who built HopStop.com which United States of America’s most celebrated brand, Apple Inc has bought for one billion Dollars.
That is not all, Chinedu Echuruo is in Nigeria to invest in small businesses that will grow Nigeria and Africa.
According to The Wall Street Journal’s publication, AllThingsDigital, the term of the deal with Apple has not been disclosed officially, but HopStop has been compared to Israel’s Waze, which was recently acquired by Google for $1 billion.
Founded in 2005, 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.
Echeruo, formerly an analyst at investment banks and hedge funds, who founded HopStop, is now chairman of the Board for the app firm.
The move, according to market intelligence, is seen as Apple’s plan to bolster its map offering especially given Google’s recent acquisition of Waze.
A serial entrepreneur, Echeruo, grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended Kings College, Lagos.
He attended Syracuse University and the Harvard Business School in the United States and founded HopStop.com after working for several years in the Mergers and 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.
He also worked at AM Investment Partners, a $500 million volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund.
He founded and raised nearly $8 million for his two U.S. based Internet companies: Hopstop.com and Tripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired in 2010 by American travel and navigation information company, Rand McNally.
True to form, Echeruo is working on yet another venture but this time, focused on small businesses in Africa. According to him, “there is no reason why every entrepreneur should have 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 customise it to suit their own situation; essentially, a business-in-a-box.”
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, online services, and personal computers.
Its best-known hardware products are the Mac line of computers, the iPod media player, the iPhone smartphone, the iPad tablet computer, and the Apple Watch smartwatch. Its online services include iCloud, the iTunes Store, and the App Store.
Apple’s consumer software includes the OS X and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media browser, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites.
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976, to develop and sell personal computers.
It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977, and was renamed as Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007, to reflect its shifted focus towards consumer electronics. Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average on March 19, 2015.
Apple is the world’s second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics, world’s largest technology company by Total Assets and the world’s third-largest mobile phone maker.
On November 25, 2014, in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalisation, Apple became the first U.S. company to be valued at over $700 billion.
