Blessed Idornigie, building a billion-dollar online movie streaming platform
Blessed Ilukor Idornigie is the chief executive officer of IbakaTV, an online movie streaming platform. Blessed makes Africans in the Diaspora watch Nollywood movies through YouTube and now IbakaTV.
He started IbakaTV in 2011 with just N1 million and in his room. He leveraged YouTube to reach Nigerians and Africans in the Diaspora, having acquired premium partnership with the video-sharing platform, which opened doors to channels such as IbakaTV|Nollywood, IbakaTV|Yoruba, AfricaMagicClip and IbakaTV.
Today, IbakaTV has about one billion views. The viewers, mostly Africans in the Diaspora, pay to watch Nollywood movies in dollars.
Start-Up Digest Editor, Odinaka Anudu, spoke with Blessed in his Omole Phase 2 office in Lagos. Here are the excerpts:
What motivated you to go into online movie streaming business?
I worked in various companies. I had an online platform called E-Gold. I started working at 17. I have worked in a software company, an airline company and other companies. I also worked in iRoko , in their IT department. Before working with them, I had already started an online business. I made a lot of losses but when I connected IRoko, I knew this was it. There were a lot of things that happened there that made me say ‘this is it’. When I was working, I was making more research. I don’t believe in monopolistic market; I believe people need to have choices. So I needed to bring innovations into online streaming business. I saw an opportunity.
Before now, people in the Diaspora would call their relatives to send them Nollywood movies. Some people took advantage of that by posting movies illegally online. Some even pirated them. But we saw the need to do Nollywood on line because of the demand. As a start-up company we needed an interface that would launch us out. That’s why we went into partnership with YouTube, which was already a platform everybody knew in the Diaspora. So what we did was to ride on the platform to reach out to our audience. So they gave us a premium partnership and because of that, we had access to a lot of things. We were able to get a lot of subscribers. When we were starting, we got over one million but in terms of views now, it is over a billion.
So in terms of watch time, it runs into billions as well. That was our success story in YouTube. We won two awards on YouTube and the latest award was the best Nollywood channel in Africa last year. As a result of that, we said we would have our own platform known as IbakaTv.com. What we do on YouTube is Advert Based on Video on Demand. What that means is that we provide content and YouTube provides advert on it. We launched what we called S-VOD, that is subscription based on video on demand. That’s why we launched IbakaTv. It’s based on subscription model platform. People pay weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually or bi-annually for them to have access to our content.
You can pay in naira but it converts automatically into dollars. The success story is that it is like a DSTV on the internet. But this has no limitation. For IbakaTV,
We didn’t shut down our YouTube. What we said is ‘if you want to watch our movies on YouTube, you watch the low-budget movies there.
For the high-budget movies, you can watch them on IbakaTV. They are more expensive. YouTube can draw a lot of traffic and we use the platform to drive customers to our platform.
Which means you have a partnership with Nollywood?
What we did was to enter into agreements in terms of acquisition and licensing. We buy most movies from them on individual basis, depending on the quality of the movie and how trending it is. There are some movies we can buy for N2m, N1m or more.
We have created a good market for them because before apart from DSTV, there was no market for them, before, not to talk of now that the DVD market has gone down. Although Ibaka will go into production soon, the online platform is on. We have a channel on Montage as well. We try to expand our channels because our vision is to become the number one online entertainment company globally. That’s our vision. In achieving that, it is for us to partner with Nollywood industry and create more innovative ideas.
How much did you start with and what’s your value now?
I started IbakaTV in my sister’s room. She gave me the first laptop that I used. I started with N1 million. Over time, I brought in investors. The initial fund that came in was N100 million. With that, we were able to start. From there, we were able to expand. We started on YouTube and we had over $2 million, which we pumped into Ibaka. Although we are still sourcing for funds, that was the investment we put into IbakaTV.com. It’s capital intensive. We are already in the process of sourcing for more capital. Since that time to now, if you talk about investments in Ibaka, it’s running into millions of dollars. We have already involved the Bank of Industry. They just approached us
What attracts investors to Ibaka?
It is the potential. It is a new era. It’s like us living tomorrow. In Nigeria, we are migrating from analogue to digital. So whatever we are doing now is embracing the future. We are talking about the population. Those embracing what we are doing now are not up to two percent. Imagine when infrastructure is in place when it comes to the Internet. Imagine the population. The good thing about this business is not just about the money but about the potential.
Are you also getting Nigerian viewers?
We are. But you know what will make the Nigerian market more reliable is data. Data is expensive. We are coming up with a strategy, which is offline streaming. But it has to start from online streaming. We are looking at ensuring that Nigerians everywhere have access to our movies.
How much do I have to pay to have access to your movies?
We have annually, quarterly and bi-annually. For monthly, people pay as low as N2, 000 or N4, 000-something for quarterly.
You are earning dollars when the naira is weak. How does it feel?
The advantage is that our platform is dollar-denominated. The audience in the Diaspora are actually the ones that watch these movies. The advantage for us is that we earn the money in dollars. What is costing this economy is that we spend dollars elsewhere. But here we are earning it.
How do you see entrepreneurship environment in Nigeria?
If IbakaTV is in the US, we would have made more success. Our business is online and a lot of banks and the government do not understand it. The environment is not friendly; we don’t have light. Right now we are burning diesel. The banks would rather put money in oil. So it’s not friendly in our market, but BoI came and is willing to support.
When will you become a billion-dollar company?
We are already ‘millions-dollar’ company. We will get there in the next couple of years, looking at what we have on ground. When we start our online platforms, knowing that people will access our movies and not creating any kind of restriction, we will be up there. We know the market is here.
What’s your advice to young entrepreneurs?
All the places I had worked before I started Ibaka, I didn’t stay for more than two years. What I will advise every young Nigerian is to believe in themselves. The world is waiting for you. What has always driven me is the passion. That thing you always think about when you wake up in the morning is your passion. You have something you can use to better this country and you just have to discover it by believing in yourself.
ODINAKA ANUDU