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The journey of a successful entrepreneur does not start in a day. This is applicable to Obinna Okwodu as well, an entrepreneur who started out to take-on the broken rental system in Nigeria.
He is the CEO and founder of FIBRE, a Lagos-based company that helps the people access high quality houses as well as paying for the rents on monthly basis as opposed to the 2-years rent payment.
FIBRE helps get the required home on demand after the request has been made on their website, then Tenants’ get into a one-year contracts and pay 25% of the annual fee upfront which is three month’s rent before spreading what’s left over the next 11 months. They also work with landlords across Lagos to make it very possible for people
Obinna was born to Mr. and Mrs. Uchenne Okwodu in the United State but moved back to complete his primary education at Grange School and Secondary Education at Olashore International School. He went back to the States to finish his A-levels at the Winchester College at England. He studied Civil Engineering from School of Engineering and another B.SC degree in management Science from Sloan School of Management in Massachusettes. He worked for awhile in Morgan Stanley Real Estate before moving to Nigeria in 2015.
Obinna being a real estate person noticed that the broken rental system which was quite different from where he was coming from when he relocated to Lagos, he decided to dive into it. He noticed that landlords assumes the tenants are all ready to take a risk in asking for a 2-year rent upfront together with service fee, agent fee, legal fee, caution deposits and the likes. He created his company, FIBRE to tackle the problem and prove the idea wrong.
Although it was difficult for Obinna to start up such business in Nigeria being that there are no businesses like that and the competition wasn’t there, he still forged ahead. Now he has been listed by Forbes as one of 30 Young Promising Entrepreneur in 2018.
