Meet 9flix: The Nigerian startup aiming to disrupt African Tv + we chat with the founder

A couple of weeks ago, via twitter, I discovered a new Nigerian start up, www.9flix.com that aims to take Africa’s rich culture to the global audience by taking the continent’s tv to the web.

The start up is quite new, it has been on-line for just about four months but judging by the views on some of the content, it is gaining some traction already.

The site itself is still a beta of sorts and they as they are still currently accepting feedback and squashing bugs, but the design is clean and clutter free with a focus on the content being showcased.

I did catch up with Aliyu Daku, the brain behind 9flix recently, and I got to ask a few questions about the start up, and the Nigerian tech scene generally.

Techsuplex: What is 9flix?

Aliyu Daku: 9flix is a start-up project working to bring good quality TV content from across Africa to millions of viewers within the continent and beyond. Quality and originality we believe is the key to making African entertainment content appeal to  the Global market as a window to Africa’s rich culture.

Techsuplex: What inspired the idea of 9flix? 

Aliyu Daku: The fact that sooner or later, most of our activities including communication and entertainment will shift online no matter how hard traditional media and telco companies try to keep their ‘soon to be disrupted’ business models and high margins. And with time, I believe Africa could grow to be a front in innovation like in commerce, as we are seeing in some parts of the continent and also in the future of home entertainment.

I think it is the lack of sufficient infrastructure that makes Africa a front in innovation as we can’t just replicate any technology from outside the continent and expect it to work for us here. This fact makes African entrepreneurs real problem solvers and could soon provide tech solutions on a Global scale.

Techsuplex: How long has the site been open to the public?

Aliyu Daku: 9flix has been live since mid February, which means the site has been open to users for over 120 days.

Techsuplex: What’s response been like?

Aliyu Daku: We’ve seen steady growth in traffic since launch, but most importantly we have seen some social media engagement which we believe is vital in brand building. We are also aggressively seeking feedback to better make the site suit the purpose it was built for.

Techsuplex: What challenges have you faced so far and what challenges are you still facing with regards to offering the service.

Aliyu Daku: Business and content development have not been easy because most potential partners would want to be paid up front than go into any revenue sharing agreement. I think the solution is either to raise enough money to be able to pay for content and/or endorsements or build a brand first that most potential partners would want to be in business with. The latter takes time, so I think the former is easier and should come first. Luckily for us, we are on the verge of concluding a huge content agreement that could carry the site to the next level.

Techsuplex:In the last few years the Nigerian startup/tech scene has gotten very competitive, cut-throat in some cases. I’ve seen one or two startups toeing the same path as you…at least one has already signed some content deals, how do you plan to differentiate?

At some point, this will all come down to who has the best content and provides the best user experience. In a business like this, you need sustainable content flow which should continue to build up over time. Of course we will monitor our competition closely, but we must not lose sight of the long term goal which is to build a totally new TV experience from Africa.

Techsuplex: Tell us a bit more about yourself, the brains behind the service.

Aliyu Daku: My background has nothing to do with tech, I studied architecture in school and of course there aren’t that many architectural design concepts you could use in web design. I spent the last decade though experimenting and working on ways to generate web traffic to various sites. Web traffic generation is now not as technical and straight forward as it used to be, but that experience still is valuable in taking 9flix mainstream at least in Nigeria for a start.

Techsuplex: The decision to make apps for services like yours are a mixed bag, on one hand the market in some respects isn’t mature enough to justify such investments yet, on the other hand as much as possible you want to cater to as many demographics as possible and some of those would want apps. What approach would you be taking with regards to making an app for 9flix?

The answers to this question lie in the 9flix usage data. Same data will tell us when to focus on an app and for which platform.

Techsuplex: Let’s talk about the Nigerian Tech scene as a whole, What are your impressions on the scene as a whole?

Aliyu Daku: I think we will see a shift in the Nigerian tech scene. Some of the top startups that spend a lot of money in acquiring new users will reach a certain stage where growth would begin to stall as the present market saturates and they’ll then find out if they have been running a sustainable model or not. A lot of the smaller startups are in markets that have no scale potential at all but are great ideas.

On a more positive note, I think we will see a lot of growth in the coming years, a lot of new profitable business ideas will emerge especially in local/mobile commerce, b2b services like social marketing startups that would help companies reach the social media active population. We’ll continue to see media and entertainment startups as the Nigerian entertainment scene continues to boom. We’ll also see data focussed startups emerge as brands would want to know what the Nigerian consumer is up to as online spending and number of users increase. I hope major sites like Nairaland would realize the kind of goldmine they are sitting on as a discussion forum and largest community for Nigerians online and with time come up with more ways to monetize and also probably be a bit more user centric.

Techsuplex: Any last words for the readers?

Aliyu Daku: I think now is the best time to start building a startup in Nigeria, just do a lot of market research, seek mentoring and give it or at least try to give it a 100%