Hotels.ng is probably one of the success stories of technology and Internet innovation in Africa. Indeed in any listing of Africa’s promising Internet companies, the Mark Essien’s Hotels.ng must be right among the top listed companies. It also could very well be the poster child of innovation within the tech and Internet space.
However, so much has been said and talked about Hotels.ng and its founder and CEO Mark Essien you pretty much think you know all there is to know about the company and its founder.
Well, in an interview with #StartupSouth, Essien revealed stats and figures at different stages of Hotels.ng growth that only a handful might have known about. We tend to focus much on the success story that the company has become, but few delve into the work, time and investment that went into creating that success story.
In his interview with #StartupSouth, Essien talks about his personal journey; how he turned down numerous investors (like Rocket Internet) who had already identified the potential his startup could have on the market. Essien further talks about how he bootstrapped his way until Spark Fund identified his startup company and injected some money into it some few months after its inception.
May 2015, Hotels.ng received $1.2 million investment from EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund and Omidyar Network. At the time, the company was valued at just over $5 million.
This might be old news, but Mark Essien has been featured in Forbes’ 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa 2015. Enough blurbs about Hotels.ng and its founder and CEO below is a video interview Essien did with #StartupSouth.
