Can we meet you?

My name is Tochukwu Nkwocha. I run a shipping and procurement company called Spreadit Limited and our website is spreaditglobal.com. Yeah, so that's in a nutshell who I am.

Can you tell us a little about your professional background? What were you up to before Spreadit global was birthed?

Well, I studied physics and astronomy at UNN. After NYSC, I became a software programmer. I programmed for about a year or two and then went into sales for a leading software company called Appzone which is a leading software company today. They’ve just raised about $10 million in investment. So I worked with them for a year before I went into entrepreneurship. Of course, I first went into audiobooks. I had an audiobook business where I created audiobooks for most of the big churches in Nigeria like Winners Chapel, MFM, Assemblies of God Church, and so on.

So I was doing audiobooks but at a point, audiobook became quite a tough business because Nigeria is not so much of a knowledge economy. So it wasn’t possible to continue. I was part of the first recipients of the Tony Elumelu Foundation’s seed fund of $5000 and from there I started SpreadIt in 2018. I registered the company in January 2018 and we started operations in April. So we are three years old now. So, that has been my journey so far.

 

How has the entrepreneurship journey been for you?

Well like I said it's tough, it's tough anywhere in the world anyway where you are trying to bring anything to life. It all depends on your persistence and belief in what you are pursuing. So for me its been like what any entrepreneur will face. Yes, we’ll say Nigeria has its peculiarities, people always complain about access to funding, well I didn’t have a problem with access to funding because I was my own investor. I didn’t mention that after audio-books, I started distributing music online and also providing content for several websites abroad. I also distribute ebooks, I still distribute music and e-books today. I manage some of the biggest gospel artists today in Africa, online. So somewhat, the monies we were getting from these sources helped us to drive spreadit before it became profitable. This is because it took us about two years of paying salaries, of pushing and pushing, advertising aggressively before we could break even and we became profitable.




So what inspired spreadit?

Well, I also do some speaking. I speak to audiences a lot even though I have slowed down now to focus more on building the business but before this time, I usually have the opportunity to speak to audiences across Nigeria. So I was invited to Aba in 2017, no 2018 January. There’s this programme that is organised by a Pastor in Aba, he reaches out to a lot of people in Aba in January. So I was asked to come and speak to them about opportunities available on the internet for making money. Of course, you know people from the eastern part of the country are known for their Ariaria market where you have to go physically.

Read the concluding part here: https://theexclusiveafrica.net/2021/06/03/tochukwu-nkwocha-empowering-small-businesses-one-shipment-at-a-time/

Good!