Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, popularly known on social media platforms as Iyi or “E”, is a Nigerian techpreneur who has founded three companies.
He was criticised by some social media users on November 2, 2022 for making a case for the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu.
Biography
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji wasis Nigerian born on 28 March, 1991. Going by his date of birth, he is 31 years old as at 2022.
Iyi as at 2021 has invested in about 45 businesses while making a 5X turnover of his portfolio.
Education
He had his secondary education at Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja where he graduated in 2007.
His studied Legal Studies and Economics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Marriage and Children
E has a daughter.
Career
Iyi’s massive hit in the technological industry was in 2013. At the age of 19, he started a Bookneto Inc, a social e-learning platform for University professors to independently teach online courses. The company was acquired by the Canadian Innovation Center in 2013 for an undisclosed amount.
Speaking about the company at the time, he had said; “What inspired us to start Bookneto was our concern for the student learning experience.
“We realized from personal experiences that the system wasn’t working. Students did not have the freedom to study as they should: with constant access to course material, without an overbearing content wall, with the help of teachers who care about their learning process and within a knowledgeable global learning community.
“We thought that the advent of the internet will change education just as it has changed so many other things, but it seems the educational system just moved the same problems online and even further complicated the issues (see online-for-profit Universities, for example).
“Bookneto was formed as a student response to the many problems with the education system.”
After this, he founded Andela with an old friend, Jeremy Johnson. Andela is a talent accelerator that recruits and trains software developers and connects them with employers. The company launched its first recruitment cycle in 2014 and since the time has attracted investments from notable investors including Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg invested $24 million.
Aboyeji would later leave Andela after helping to build the company to $100 million to found yet another groundbreaking project.
In 2016, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji founded Flutterwave, a provider of technology and infrastructure solutions for digital payments across Africa.
Flutterwave at present is reputed as the most valued unicorn in Africa with a valuation of $3 billion.
The San Francisco-based payment company is focused almost entirely on Africa, and currently serves more than 900,000 businesses, including Uber, Booking.com, and Nigerian e-commerce giant Jumia.
Aboyeji however earlier this year (2022) claimed he sold his shares in Flutterwave in 2021.
Aboyeji is a co-founder and investor in Moove Africa, a company that provides customers with access to vehicle financing.
Iyi is Founder & Executive Chairman of Partcloud, a company he started in 2020. Partcloud is a collective of technologists building and deploying solutions for businesses globally.
Net worth
As at 2021, Iyi has an estimated net worth of $12 million. Meanwhile, some reports claimed he is worth as much as $300 million. However, NewsWireNGR cannot confirm neither of this estimation.
Controversies
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji was fingered in an article by David Hundeyin that accused Flutterwave’s management and current CEO and co-founder, Olugbenga Agboola of fraud and insider trading levelled against the company’s management.
A similar Medium post by Clara Wanjiku also levelled similar allegations.
Iyi however denied the allegations while disclosing he already sold his shares in the company before the report.
Iyin, in a series of tweets, denied knowing about the unethical conduct and sexual harassment levied against Gbenga Agboola, co-founder and current CEO of the company. He also noted that the report was an attack on his reputation and livelihood, stressing that he would take legal action against Hundeyin over the alleged ‘libellous publication’.
“The attack on my reputation and livelihood by a purveyor of yellow journalism pursuing a mission of personal vendetta is surprising and regrettable but not unexpected. Success does have its price. As the author has subsequently admitted – this article does not implicate me in any wrongdoing, but he only maliciously slandered me because, according to him, we don’t like each other,” he tweeted.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to clear my name from such a grave accusation. As promised, I will be following up with necessary steps on appropriate legal action against the libellous publication and its enabler.”
Some days later, Kenya’s Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) obtained a court order to freeze the $52.5 million (Sh6.2 billion) linked to the Nigerian fintech firm. The funds were frozen from multiple bank accounts, including Guaranty Trust Bank, Co-operative Bank, Ecobank and KCB.
The Kenyan agency, which believes the funds were proceeds of fraud, said it would ultimately file a petition to have the funds forfeited to the Kenyan Government.
Following the negative trail online, after the development, Iyin deactivated his Twitter account.
He however claimed; “I made a decision to abandon Twitter a week back and officially deactivated a few days before the story broke.
“Furthermore, the issue at hand doesn’t concern me because I left Flutterwave in 2018 and I sold my shares in the company in 2021 so it’s absurd to imagine that that would drive my decision”.
Disclaimer
The information in this article was curated from online sources. NewsWireNGR or its editorial team cannot independently verify all details.
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