{"id":4966,"date":"2015-05-17T21:13:07","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T21:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=4966"},"modified":"2015-05-17T21:13:07","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T21:13:07","slug":"apple-inc-buys-nigerian-born-chinedu-echeruos-hopstop-com-for-1-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=4966","title":{"rendered":"Apple Inc. Buys Nigerian Born Chinedu Echeruo\u2019s Hopstop.com For $1 Billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple has acquired Chinedu Echeruo\u2019s HopStop.com, The Wall Street Journal\u2019s publication, AllThingsDigital reports. Founded in 2005, HopStop.com makes mobile applications for both iOS and Android that covers over 300 cities and that helps people get directions or find nearby subway stations and bus stops. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed as at the time of this publication.
\nChinedu Echeruo, formerly an analyst at investment banks and hedge funds founded HopStop in 2005. Echeruo is now Chairman of the Board for HopStop.
\nHopStop has oft been compared to Israel\u2019s Waze which was recently acquired by Google for $1 billion. The move is seen as Apple\u2019s plan to bolster its map offering especially given Google\u2019s recent acquisition of Waze.
\nA serial entrepreneur, \"chinedu\"<\/a> grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended Kings College, Lagos. He attended Syracuse University and the Harvard Business School in the United States and founded HopStop.com after working for several years in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase where he was involved in a broad range of M&A, Financing and Private Equity transactions.
\nHe also worked at AM Investment Partners, a $500 million volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund.
\nHe founded and raised nearly $8 million for his two U.S based internet companies; Hopstop.com andTripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired in 2010 by American travel and navigation information company, Rand McNally. He was named Black Enterprise Magazine\u2019s Small Business Innovator of the year and listed in the magazine\u2019s Top 40 under 40 and is currently a partner and head of the Principal Investing group at Constant Capital, a West Africa based investment bank.
\nTrue to form, Echeruo is working on yet another venture but this time, focused on small businesses in Africa. Check out a video of Chinedu Echeruo below at last year\u2019s TedxIkoyi where he talks about his latest project for small businesses in Africa; \u201ccrowd sourced business in a box.\u201d
\nAccording to him:
\n\u201cThere is no reason why every entrepreneur should have to reinvent the wheel every single time in all the countries in Africa. My idea is to essentially to have one place where a budding entrepreneur can access a template for starting a business, and then customize it to suit their own situation. Essentially a business-in-a-box.\u201d
\nAfrican Leadership<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple has acquired Chinedu Echeruo\u2019s HopStop.com, The Wall Street Journal\u2019s publication, AllThingsDigital reports. Founded in 2005, HopStop.com makes mobile applications for both iOS and Android that covers over 300 cities and that helps people get directions or find nearby subway stations and bus stops. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed as at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,225],"class_list":["post-4966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-apple-inc","tag-chinedu-echeruo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/chinedu.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1i6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4968,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions\/4968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}