NairaBet founder, Oloye Akin Alabi, has revealed how his experiences at nightclubs motivated him to establish Nightlife International (Nightlife.NG).
According to the Ibadan-born serial entrepreneur, the business operates in the Nightlife industry. “It has a media arm comprising a blog, social media pages, TV show etc which report activities of Nigerian nightclubs, bars, lounges and so on.”
This is coming few years after the football enthusiast pioneered popular online sports betting company- NairaBet.
Alabi, who detailed this in his book- Small Business, Big Money, explained how he was a night club, hanging out with his friends on a Friday. “I was at a popular nightclub one night and right in front of me, a popular musician broke a glass and stabbed a bouncer. I mean I was just like five feet away. A fragment of the glass actually hit my face. I woke up the next day and saw different versions of the story online.
“I was livid because the fight happened right in front of me. I wondered where they got their fake news from, as United States President, Donald Trump would say. I concluded I could not blame any of the media outlets because all they reported was hear-say. No media outlet covers the night life industry. I decided I was going to start one.”
Alabi recently took a leave of absence from NairaBet to enable him contest Egbeda/Ona Ara federal constituency seat of the House of Representatives.
He disclosed that the company will also have a hospitality section which will be responsible for linking night crawlers with the best possible offers from night life operators.
“One day, I was talking to a friend that lives in the United Kingdom but was holidaying in Nigeria. He was upset because according to him, he was not allowed entry into a nightclub the previous night. He said the bouncers just wouldn’t listen. He ranted and raved that he had money to spend so why would anyone treat him like that?
“I told him that if you want to visit the hottest night clubs in Lagos on a Friday, your best bets are one, you go early, two, the owners/managers/workers know you and three, you make a reservation.
He started asking me about how to make reservations. I told him to go to the websites and the social media pages of his preferred nightclubs. He said he would prefer if someone could do it for him. That hit me.
“Here was someone, money in hand, ready to spend it. This is a market waiting to be tapped. The Nigerian nightlife industry, though not as big as that of countries like the United States, is a very hot and vibrant market with special needs and wants which can easily be taken care of, in exchange for money.
“Those are two of the reasons that motivated me to launch this company. It is costing me just a N50,000 blog to set the business up.
“Let us not digress from the main point here. The point is you should not create a product and look for customers. No. You should find a market and their desires, create a business around it.
“I did not just come up and say I want to sell food or I want to start my own nightclub. No, I saw a need and want somewhere and decided to fill it.
“Now I don’t know if Nightlife.NG will be a success. I am launching it in 2017 so depending on when you are reading this, you can judge as to whether it succeeded or not. But it’s success or failure is not the point.
“The point is I followed a sound business and marketing principle and you should be like that to. Forget the ideas you currently have and let the demands of of a market influence the kind of business you do.
