Hotels.ng is a very popular platform in Nigeria for booking hotels and hotels reservation. Many individuals hardly know who the owner of the platform is. In this post, we’ll be examining the full biography of Mark Essien, CEO of Hotels.ng, and how he started this famous platform.
Biography of Mark Essien, CEO of Hotels.ng
Mark Essien was born on 18 December, 1980. He hails from Akwa Ibom State. He was born in Ikot-Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State to the family of Anthony Essien.
While growing up in Ikot-Ekpene, his father was one of the state’s top politicians, and his mother ran a successful school. He was enrolled into his mother’s nursery and primary school. Thus, it can be said that Mark Essien grew up in a middle-class home.
After finishing from his mother’s school, he was enrolled at Federal Government College, Ikot-Ekpene. This was where he did his secondary school education. From there, he moved to Germany to study for his degree programs.
In Germany, he enrolled to a university in Berlin to study Computer Hardware Engineering. As a student here, he learned a lot about programming and software engineering. He founded a file sharing software Gnumm.
Right after he finished with his undergraduate program, he enrolled for his master degree project. It was while undergoing this study that he discovered the gap in Nigeria’s growing internet industry. This gap was the absence of a hotel booking platform. This led him to create hotels.ng in 2012.
He created hotels.ng and it became an instant success. This prompted him to relocate to Nigeria. Relocating to Nigeria, he sought for funds for his project. His fund-raising and fund-seeking were successful as Spark.ng invested in his business to the tune of $75,000 and $150,000.
This not being enough funding compared to the greatness he envisaged for his start-up, Mark Essien sought for more funds. In 2016, eBay invest $1.2 million in the business. From 2012 till date that hotels.ng was founded, the business has continued to expand and grow. Users in Nigeria and outside Nigeria continue to discover the platform.
Hotels.ng has more than 5,000 daily users at the moment.
Mark Essien has gone on to expand the business further. He established subsidiaries in the business like Hotel.africa for booking and lodging in hotels in Africa. He and his company has also gone on to establish Fly.africa, a platform for booking and lodging flights.
His leadership skills and work ethics has made his businesses remain successful in the midst of foldups and challenges for start-ups in Nigeria. While the contemporaries to his businesses continue to fold up, his businesses have remained largely successful. He helps a lot of other young entrepreneurs to succeed in different ways, he gives scholarships, and a lot more.
He is happily married with kids. He spends most of his time in Lagos, where the headquarters of his business is located.
What is the Net Worth of Mark Essien?
Mark Essien’s estimated net worth, or the worth of his businesses and assets, are around $20 million. He should have been worth more if not for the volatility of Nigeria’s tech space. His businesses and assets could be worth more with time as more Nigerians embrace the use of technology and the sector stabilizes