Billionaire Innocent Chukwuma, Innoson Founder, Shares his Success Story

Innocent, the last of 6 kids, was born in Nnewi, Anambra State, In 1961 to Mr and Mrs Chukwuma Mojekwu.

In 1978 after he was done with his secondary school education, Innocent Chukwuma applied to study Engineering at the university. He waited for a while to get his admission results before resorting to work at his elder brother’s (Gabriel) medicine store. When his university application results were finally out, he didn’t make the cut, and so couldn’t get in that year.

While he worked for his brother, he realised he had a natural talent for trading, and so moved on to serve Chief Romanus Eze Onwuka, where he learnt a trade.

Apprenticeship still is a proven method of gaining skills that leads to success in life. It is a kind of mentorship with practical learning. This is an ingredient that is lacking in most young people today, hence the higher rate of failure in business.

A year later, in 1979, Innocent left his boss and returned to his brother, Gabriel. During which he registered a business called Gabros International. The business was funded by his brother to the tune of 3,000 Naira ($10; which had a considerably higher value back then), and traded in motorcycle spare parts.

With total freedom to run the business his own way, Innocent rented a shop and started purchasing merchandise.

By the end of 1980, Innocent and his elder brother, Gabriel, took a thorough account of everything the medicine store and the spare part business were making, and realised that Gabros International was making 10 times more money than the medicine store.

Thus Innocent decided to focus on motorcycle sales. He realised that most people were importing used motorcycles into Nigeria, and that their prices were really high.

This is what he said:

“I started as a small business man dealing on spare parts at Nnewi. At that time, people were bringing only second hand motorcycles to Nigeria, and I felt there should be a way to reduce the price of the new ones, so that people will be interested enough to buy new ones, rather than the second hand motorcycles.

I travelled overseas and found out that there were four
companies importing motorcycles into Nigeria. First was Leventis that was bringing the Honda brand, the second company was Yamaco that was bringing Yamaha, the other company was Bolus that was bringing Suzuki and the fourth was
CFAO that was bringing moblet.

These were the companies that were dealing on motorcycle in
Nigeria, and my company was the next one. So when I went there, I discovered that when they brought the motorcycles in crate and each crate contained one motorcycle which took a lot of space and you can put about 40 units in one 40ft container. In one container with 40 units of motorcycles in a 40ft container, the motorcycle will become expensive. So after evaluating it, I went to overseas and packed 200 units in one 40ft container and my price came down by 40%. Of course, this was cheaper.

This ingenuity on the part of Innoson brought down the initial cost of Motorcycles from N150,000 to N60,000. Today, nobody thinks of buying second hand motorcycle anymore in Nigeria.

It was in the course of motorcycle importation, that he
discovered that there are a lot of plastics in a motorcycle, and that is one of the reasons he later set up a plastic plant to produce the plastics components locally.

In 1995, Chukwuma defied a major industrial boundary, by installing an automated assembly line at the Nnewi plant, thereby making Innoson Nigeria the first fully indigenous motorcycle maker to join Leventis and Boulos Enterprises in their club of companies producing the machines in Nigeria.

Less than 10 years after going into making motorcycles locally, Chuwuma branched into plastics manufacturing: This was when INNOSON Nigeria Limited, in 2002, sired INNOSON Technical and Industrial Company Limited, located in Emene, Enugu.

Known formerly as Eastern Plastics, which was owned then by the Enugu State Government, the company was at the time of its acquisition by Innoson, derelict with obsolete machinery. But it was later re-equipped with state-of-the-art production facilities and transformed into the biggest plastics company in Nigeria, with products widely acclaimed to be among the best in the market. At the last count, Innoson Technical makes more than 60 plastic products with the list steadily growing as fresh moulds are added to the production lines to satisfy the demands for new items

In February 2007, Chukwuma embarked on what some analysts perceived then as a mission impossible, when it incorporated INNOSON Vehicle Manufacturing Company Limited (IVM), to produce sundry commercial automobiles, utility vehicles and passenger cars, in collaboration with a consortium of Chinese auto manufacturers.
With the public display of some of the vehicles at the 2nd Nnewi International Auto Trade Fair held at the Beverly Hills Hotels (Gabros Sports Complex) in the last quarter of 2009, IVM did not only silence the critics, but made a bold statement about its readiness to achieve the avowed mission of being the first (indigenous) auto maker to produce truly Nigerian vehicles that are affordable and reliable.

And just as the ovation for the Nnewi-made vehicles was hitting a crescendo, Chukwuma, in collaboration with other investors, established another multi-billion naira industrial outfit, namely General Tyres & Tubes Limited, (also located in Emene Industrial Layout in Enugu) which has started trial production of tyres and tubes.

At full capacity, General Tyres & Tubes can meet the nation’s motorcycle (and later motor vehicle) tyre and tube needs.

Today Innoson group employs over 7400 people in Nigeria, and has won many awards, including the African Business of the year Award 2012.

Innocent Chukwuma has also been honored with several titles, including Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR), in November, 2011, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON), in February 2008, awarded by the late president Umaru Musa Yar’adua, National Honours of the National Productivity Order of Merit (NPOM) in 2010, both conferred by President Jonathan, Special Merit Award by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Meritorious Award by the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) in 2008, Special Presidential Merit Award by the Nigerian Society of Engineers December 2011, MANCAP Award of Excellence by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) in 2008.

While being hosted in his hometown Nnewi, He passionately pleaded for more youths to go into manufacturing. He said that despite the dire economic circumstances, that Nigeria remains a very fertile and virgin ground for young entrepreneurs to flourish. He however warned that entrepreneurship is not for the lazy man.