Elochukwu Umeh: Redefining Nigeria’s digital landscape

Nigeria is hugely blessed with talented young people who are reshaping and redefining the digital landscape.

Elochukwu Umeh, now 36, is among the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the country’s tech space dictating the pace of the industry, making the country proud on the global scene.

Elo, as he is fondly called, leads Terragon Limited, a firm that uses data and technology to simplify the process of reaching African consumers through innovation on the mobile device.

The Ikoyi, Lagos-based Terragon, operates from Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and India, supporting the growth of big companies and multinationals across the continent.

Umeh started this firm nine years ago when he was merely 27.

Bloomberg describes Umeh as an entrepreneur with a knack for mobile, digital innovation and creative solutions, gaining valuable experience in the mobile telecommunications industry.

He has worked in different countries in Africa, including Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.

In 2016, Elo completed an Executive MBA from IESE Business School in University of Navarra, Spain, emerging as ‘The Best & Brightest EMBAs of the Class of 2016’.

John Healy, executive director, Global Executive MBA Program, IESE Business School, gave an insight into Elo’s personality in 2016 after the feat in Spain.

“Elochukwu Umeh is the embodiment of the new African executive with a global vision. Whilst still relatively young, he has fast-tracked his career in digital media by becoming an entrepreneur and has built one of the most significant companies in this sector in Africa.”

Healy said Elo’s vision was about creating something truly significant by helping others to become significant in their contribution to the project.

Hearly described the young Nigerian entrepreneur as highly intelligent, respectful, and engaging, and was both proud of himself and his country, adding that what was most disarming was his humility and his contribution, at both the academic and social levels.

In October last year, the Terragon Group’s founder and made the 40under40 list of entrepreneurs by IESE Business School from over 46,000 alumni across 129 countries.

The 40 businesses had created 2,197 jobs in 12 countries then and were from four continents. They had got €544 million in external investment, generating €251 million in annual revenue. Also, half of the start-ups were born during the previous five years, and it was disclosed that 17 percent of them began their activity by bootstrapping, without using external investment.

He is the current co-chair of the Mobile Marketing Association in Nigeria and was a keynote speaker at TMT Finance Africa which recently took place in London in 2017.

In an interview with Forbes last year, Elo said he joined the tech industry because he saw the potential of reaching an untapped market, which struggled due to the lack of basic infrastructure.

The entrepreneur said he was passionate about exploring the possibilities of aggregating media channels on mobile and sought to transform the way companies reached their customers across Africa.

“This passion resulted in the creation of Africa’s digital powerhouse, Terragon Group, eight years ago in Nigeria. Based in the heart of Africa, Terragon is considered a leading data and marketing technology group and houses two independent but complimentary business units – Terragon Digital and Twinpine Network – serving various multinational and local brands,” he told Forbes.

He said Terragon had experienced unprecedented growth in the past year with more opportunity on the horizon, following the launch of Adrenaline, the company’s proprietary platform, which presented huge opportunity for firms across verticals to engage, interact and acquire users via the internet and mobile operator generated media channels.

“Adrenaline, the company’s flagship software, which is a cross platform mobile ad serving and data monetisation platform specifically developed for the African market uniquely characterised by relatively low internet penetration (30 percent), high mobile penetration (84 percent) and a high percentage of prepaid subscribers (97 percent), presenting prolific mobile operator media inventory which when combined with rich data from mobile operators makes mobile users reachable and identifiable,” he told Forbes.

According to him, Adrenaline was redefining the advertising landscape by plugging mobile operators in Africa into the existing web ecosystem, targeting previously unidentifiable consumers and allowing for personalised ad serving and monetisation of the data.

ODINAKA ANUDU