Apple acquires Nigerian tech entrepreneur’s startup, HopStop

Apple has acquired online city transit guide, HopStop.com, Bloomberg
reports. Founded in 2005, by Nigerian tech entrepreneur, Chinedu
Echeruo, 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.

HopStop has oft been compared to Israel's Waze which was recently
acquired by Google for $1.1 billion. The move is seen as Apple's plan
to bolster its map offering especially given Google's recent
acquisition of Waze.

A serial entrepreneur, Chinedu Echeruo grew up in Eastern Nigeria and
attended King's 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. He also worked at AM Investment Partners, a $500 million
volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund.

He founded and raised nearly $8 million for his two U.S based internet
companies; Hopstop.com and Tripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired
in 2010 by American travel and navigation information company, Rand
McNally. He was named Black Enterprise Magazine's Small Business
Innovator of the year and listed in the magazine's 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.

True 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's TedxIkoyi where he talks about his latest
project for small businesses in Africa; "crowd sourced business in a
box."

According to him:

"There 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."

Source: Cp-africa