Webmaster turns music and film into clicks of cash online

Santos Okottah works at his client’s office in Lavington, an upmarket neighbourhood in Nairobi. He works as a web consultant, but spends several hours a week on his hobby: pestering the web to do something different – or better.

The web developer has created a media-content website (www.eziki.tv), where he already hosts videos from Fox Theatres and local film producer Jitu Films and is recruiting more seeking to sell artistic content. Eziki integrates a shopping cart to a video portal, so if you are shopping for music online and like the uploaded video, then you can purchase it instantly.

EZiki.tv solves the perennial setback of distribution and monetisation that local musicians and movie producers face in selling their content worldwide. Mr Okottah, who turned 30 last week, worked in the digital division at Nation Media Group, the publisher of this paper, for about two and a half years before starting Evolve Interactive.

He would save about Sh3,000 from his salary every month and eventually had Sh90,000 in startup capital and enough work experience and guts to venture out on his own. The computer science and engineering graduate from Maseno University also invested in a course software development.

He first worked with The Insyder magazine as an interactive media manager and developed its website, gaining skills that would come in handy later. “I interacted with young recording artists, and learnt the art of creativity,” says Mr Okottah.

“Working with a major media house as Nation sharpened my skills as I worked with smart people and the latest technology.”

As managing director of Evolve, he has learnt that the mainstream market has ignored artistes some of whom have the potential to impress a global audience. “While working for the magazine, an artist brought his music on CD and we listened to it with mixed reactions. After just a year, that song became a big hit.”

Eziki.tv builds capacity for local content by hosting videos for commercial distribution. Unlike other video sites such as YouTube, which is a free, Eziki pays artistes for their efforts. “Depending on how popular an artist’s content is, revenues generated from viewed advertisements, premium content, shopping cart etc are shared between Evolve and the content provider,” says Mr Okottah.

Eziki.tv has been integrated with Facebook and Twitter. Challenges for the young developer have been numerous, including lack of online resources for creating video websites locally. To overcome this, he created his own website from scratch, with a video content management system.

“Online videos are large files and uploading them on your typical modem is expensive, and will take quite long to upload, adding to the cost of business,” he says.

Okottah uses the virtual office concept, with the help of a laptop and mobile internet. Evolve generates income from web development projects, including mobile applications, video content management and social media. Okottah says the company is financially sufficient, though it will need more finances for expansion.

“As a bank, we can only help along the way, and we prefer to see a business that has been running for at least six months, then we can partner with the owner financially,” says an SME lender who does not wish to be named.

However, he adds, IT businesses can generate its own revenues and finance expansion if the owner gets it right.

At the beginning, like many start-ups, Mr Okottah made countless presentations and proposals to big companies that loved his idea but would never get back to him. “I tried to even ask for possible partnerships, but most of them did not understand how such a portal works,” he says. “In one instance, one company offered a lot of much money to convince me to sell the portal to them.”