|
Chief Leo Stan Ekeh,
The Chairman of Zinox Group |
Stan Ekeh: To Make
Name for Yourself as Entrepreneur, You Have to Cause Disruption in the System
Chief
Leo Stan Ekeh, Chairman, Zinox Group, has carved a niche as an entrepreneur
fired up by the desire to make a significant difference in a sector dominated
by international companies. Ekeh, who spoke on the Fidelity SME Forum shared his perspectives on winning
in a market dominated by international brands
What various lines of business are Zinox
into right now?
Zinox as
a company has a history of 14 years in business. But we’ve been in business for
26 years. I started as a very small entrepreneur. The Zinox group is the
largest ICT group in sub-Saharan Africa. We are into ICT products
manufacturing, distribution, upscale core technology solutions and support and
more. But let me start from the first company: Task System. When I came into
this country, I had to create a little bit of disruption in the system because
the economy was an IBM-driven economy, so I came with Apple Macintosh. I
launched Apple in the country about 24 years ago and we computerised all the
media and multi-media houses in the country, including the book publishing
houses nationwide. After this first disruptive move, we moved to offer solutions
to the oil and gas sector of the economy and it was at this point that Steve
Job enhanced the Graphics interface of Apple with User interface which limited
it initially from being used in the corporate sector as an alternative to IBM,
and that gave me the impetus to expand into the rare corporate sector.