The name Ope Banwo certainly rings a bell both in the entertainment and Internet community in Nigeria. This is apart from his primary constituency, which is the legal profession, where he holds a PhD.
Many Nigerians, especially those in the movie and music industries will readily remember his exploits as the founding Managing Director of Dove Media, where he made a strong statement with his activities that Nigerian movies can make mega money if things are done rightly during the production process and distribution.
With an aggressive approach, Dr. Ope Banwo was able to revolutionalise the production and distribution process of the Nigerian movie industry.
After his exploits in the movie industry, Dr. Banwo, who is also a Chattered Accountant, took on the Music Industry with Stingomania Records, combining music label, recording and artistes management in an aggressive way hitherto strange in this clime.
Aside managing and developing budding music stars, the US registered legal practitioner also managed established music and movie stars under the Stingomania management outfit.
It is however a wonder that, after a recoil, he resurfaced in the relatively new internet marketing arena in the Nigerian space.
Though a lawyer and chartered accountant, he has been championing the cause of internet marketing in a nation where many only go online for social media interactions.
The recent upsurge in the number of Nigerians taking to online marketing and raking in impressive income, in all modesty, is partly due to the aggressiveness with which Dr. Banwo approached his latest love, online marketing.
This is the approach he has always used for everything he has been involved in!
Though many Nigerians, especially those who have attended his Internet marketing classes in parts of the country, are aware of his impressive exploits in online marketing, Dr. Banwo recently achieved a major feat when he came up with a revolutionary software that has lately redefined Mobile App creation, MOBIMATIC.
Aside the creation of this software, done in conjunction with another Nigerian, he had a product launch on JV Zoo with MOBIMATIC, making a whopping N158,670,000 (One hundred and Fifty Eight Million, Six Hundred and Seventy Thousand Maura) during a five day launch. That has continued to dominate discussions when its comes to first time product launch on JV Zoo.
Intent on giving Nigerians, especially, youths, an opportunity to exploit the several opportunities and the mega money available in online marketing and mobile app sector online, Dr Banwo, in this interview, talks about the MOBIMATIC software, why he is hosting an executive presentation
of the software and mobile apps built with it in Nigeria and how Nigerian youths can take advantage of it to better their lives and start living their dreams. He also delved into how the internet provides an answer into the youth unemployment crisis in the country. Excerpts…
What is Mobimatic?
Mobimatic is a revolutionary mobile app development and business platform.
With Mobimatic you have a robust mobile app Software that makes it Super easy to build Apps for Business while providing tons of cool Features to make building awesome apps as easy as Drag and Drop.
Mobimatic also provides great Mobile App business setup to enable you earn from the Mobile App Business.
At the moment, hundreds of businesses and Mobile App Agencies across 50 countries use Mobimatic to greatly reduce the time and cost it takes to build high performance Apps.
From drag-and-drop development to app store submission, publishing a mobile app for businesses has become very easy with all the tools you need within reach.
What makes Mobimatic unique
The different features added to the Mobimatic software makes building a mobile app a unique experience.
From the social features that allows you to add a realtime Chat, or allow user posts sharing and comments in just a Click to setting up Loyalty Cards and Discount and Coupons and Scratch cards for Business.
Aside these, Mobimatic also allows you to have beautifully displayed images, videos, feeds and Podcast easily, while you can also build a native ecommerce in mobimatic or display Products from third party ecommerce solutions
Setting up sever functions like Radio, Job Portal Click to Call, Contest and much more becomes integrated. With Mobimatic, you can now say goodbye to building different app per Platform.
With a Single click you can build apps across platforms that look and feel and above all, perform amazingly.
The Mobimatic Product Launch Miracle
From all indications, the five day launch of the Mobimatic Software on JV Zoo was a miracle. A miracle many established launchers have never had in their careers.
As a first time product launcher on JV Zoo, I was not expecting to have a six figure launch especially a huge six figure launch, raking in over $430,000 that translated to N158,670,000 over a five day period. We however achieved this.
The Mobimatic Miracle is a function of both doing the right things as well as having the right product. The Mobimatic software is indeed a revolutionary one that allows a total novice to build a mobile app in minutes. You do not need any technical background to build a mobile app you can sell up to $3000 to third parties for their businesses.
Of course such a great opportunity cannot be overlooked by any forward looking person. That, I think, is one of the reasons the launch was so successful and has made the software to continue to be in high demand.
Why the Executive Presentation in Lagos, Nigeria?
Now this is the important aspect. I must confess that I am not the first or only Nigerian involved in internet marketing or product development and launch online. There are others who have been doing well with online marketing or product development. The difference, however is my resolve to empower Nigerians, especially youths based in Nigeria to take advantage of what the internet offers.
I have been in the forefront of preaching the gospel of internet business in the country for about four years now and I must confess that a lot of young Nigerians are beginning to wake up to the reality that they can rescue themselves from poverty and joblessness by embracing these opportunities.
For me, the Mobimatic software provides Nigerians businesses and youths a great opportunity to move to the next level.
As a business, either small scale or a large enterprise, you do not need a big budget to get an amazingly working mobile app to reach both existing and prospective customer. While any youth in Nigeria, with an eye of doing things for himself and improving his life can take advantage of this software by simply identifying a need and filling the gap with a mobile app he can build with Mobimatic.
That explains why I have decided to present the software on Sunday the 23rd of July at the Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos to the Nigerian audience.
Starting from 4pm, we shall be presenting this wave making software and six apps that have been made with it. There will also be testimonials from other users across the globe who are taking in thousands of dollars using Mobimatic to build mobile apps.
The lunch, where the presentation with be made is free but CEOs, Directors, Product Managers and all that other executives willing to attend will have to text their names and their organisations to these numbers: 08076244694 or 08068148300. This will confirm their attendance and also enable
us reserve their seats. The confirmation text has to be done latest by Saturday July 22.
First internet summit
We have several initiatives that we have started because I love to innovate. We did the first internet summit last year, the African Internet Business Summit, which took place in November and soon, I will be launching the first internet school in Africa – American Internet Business School in Lagos. It is the equivalent of Lagos Business School but for internet businesses where people can go online and learn different aspects of internet business like how to do social media marketing, reputation management on the internet; customer management, how to sell products and services on the internet. People can get certification in these different areas. Many of the companies employing people to manage their social media or sell online do not have trained people so we are setting up that school to provide capacity-building for individuals as well as companies on internet business-related subjects. We are partnering with foreign professionals who are experts in this field to provide the curriculum, the training etc and then we put it online and people can register as students and take courses and get certified.
Awards
To encourage internet businesses in Nigeria, Afrinet instituted two awards. We feel that one of the ways to develop internet business in Africa is to start to recognise people who are doing great in internet business. So we are organising the first dot.com awards in Africa, the Nigeria dot.com awards. The idea is to honour people in different areas of internet business like the best bank online, best newspaper online etc. We will bring together internet business professionals from within and outside Nigeria to do research online to get us the best in different categories like entertainment blog, news blog, best newspaper, best internet service provider, best insurance company online etc., about 25 categories. We will then narrow down to the best four or five in each category and the public will vote.
Two Awards
There are two awards in each category – one is called Viewers’ Choice. Here, the candidate with the most votes from the public wins regardless of whether he is number one in terms of visit or not. In other words, the person that the public voted as number one based on their experience. Then there is the Practitioners’ Choice award i.e by the African Academy of Internet Business People. They will critically look at all the finalists and pick the best based on criteria we will give them. They will also come up with their own winner, so each category will have two winners. Of course, it is possible for one person to win both awards but one will be based strictly on voting from the public while the other will be based on technical evaluation by the technical crew.”
Free Training
We also organise periodic trainings for youths. I did a freelancing course at Ajah, Lagos for unemployed youths because I believe that government should focus more on training the youths. If you can provide training that will cost little or even free training like I did, and the average person can learn how to do freelancing online, they can get to the point where they can be making $500 to
$600 monthly in less than six months. So they don’t need to apply for jobs.
There is this man I trained at our summit last year, now, he is making more than $4,000 – $5,000 on the average every month, just doing proofreading online for people all over the world. So rather than complaining and waiting for government to create jobs, people can go online now and get jobs from all over the world. Today, you can stay here and get clients from Bangladesh, Australia etc., so you can employ yourself with minimal training at minimal cost to the government.
Government should focus more on training people to be self-employed online. I feel that is one of the biggest solutions to unemployment among the youths because anybody can go to a cybercafé and learn how to do legitimate business. Anybody can get a laptop and employ himself; they don’t need to go complaining about President Muhamadu Buhari and unemployment in the country just because they have submitted applications everywhere for non-existent jobs. If they can take three or six months to learn legitimate businesses online, they can be liberated and that has motivated me as I see people who have been unemployed for four, five years starting to earn their first $100 online.
I am not saying that people will become millionaires overnight, that is a myth, you have to work hard to get there but I believe that the average person can become self-employed and can make N50,000 to N80,000 a month within three months of learning this business. That is why I am committed to internet business capacity-building in Nigeria. I feel the Press can point attention to this area, organise free seminars.
It is not all about making money for me because I believe that as you grow, our business will also grow and that is why I do a monthly free training. (Daily Post)