Ken Njoroge, the co-founder of cellulant will not be the firm’s Chief Executive Officer by the end of this year
In a statement, Njoroge said 2021 will be his last year as the captain after 18 years of running Cellulant.
He will transition from the role of a CEO by the end of June, and spend the rest of the year supporting all the teams and the new leader in the transition. Njoroge will remain a shareholder and director on the board.
The year 2020 which turned out to be challenging to many businesses across the world due to the Covid-19 outbreak offered him a window to reflect on the next step.
“Such transitions are not easy in any way and require a great deal of growth, though, and patience. I remember my team and I started 2020 with a clear mission to recover from the past three difficult years. We set out with an airtight vision, an incredibly talented team, the right resources on board, and that hunger for excellence that has now become our corporate identity. 2020 turned out very differently for many people and businesses worldwide, of which we were no exception. However, apart from being a challenging year, it was a season of deep reflection. It gave me a chance to pause, reflect, question, examine, and double down on why I do what I do,” said Njoroge.
Cellulant – co-founded by Njoroge and Bolaji Akinboro of Nigeria – became locally known for selling ringtones to users of basic mobile phones but this proved unsustainable as advanced phones came to market, enabling users to store music and other sounds that they could use as ringtones. It would transit to content provision and later to mobile banking. Through the years, the firm has innovated and is today one of the largest payments and funds transfer fin-tech in Africa. The firm says its digital payments ecosystem connects about 100 banks that have operations in 13 countries servicing 34 countries.
In 2018, the firm was able to raise $47.5 Million (Sh5.23 billion) from TPG Growth’s The Rise Fund, which it said would be used to scale digital payments across Africa.
In an interview, he disclosed that the process of financing which saw Private investment firm TPG pays (Sh5.23 billion) started from the foundation but the final leg was a 24-months journey where he went to 60 investors across the world and did 400 presentations and a lot of travels from South Africa, London to the US.
“Why we connected with the final investor is that they have experience in technology investment with very good track record globally,” he says adding that the team was interested in Cellulant because the company is in payment business and the firm has connections in different parts of Africa.
Culled from Standardmedia
