Tonye Irims
Tonye Irims (born 1970 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria) is a Nigerian-South African entrepreneur. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Wisolar, a South Africa-based prepaid solar electricity Startup company. [1][2][3]
Early life and education
Irims was raised in Lagos, Nigeria. He moved to Johannesburg, South Africa in 1994 at the age of 23. His father, the late Captain B.T Irimagha, was a master mariner who served with the Nigerian navy and subsequently with Mobil and NNPC Nigeria. His mother, Mrs. Muriel Irimagha was a business woman of royal Bonny kingdom descent.[4]
Irims studied marketing at the University of Port Harcourt and clean power at Imperial College London.[5]
Career
Tonye Irims started his career at the age of 23 after he moved to South Africa. He ventured into various menial activities and later worked in sales at a houseware company. He later did Model (person)|modelling until he met Mike Adenuga, for whom he did volunteer work. In 2006, Tonye launched Wikiglobal, where he introduced dual-SIM semi-feature phones with the nucleus O.S. He could not go further with it due to a lack of acceptance of the new system in South Africa at the time.[6]
In 2016, Irims started Wisolar. He is regarded as one of the few Nigerians in South Africa to have built a successful business.[7]
Personal life
Irims does not subscribe to any religious ideology. He almost lost his life on the 6th of January 2021 in a botched home invasion. [8]
References
- ↑ "Prepaid solar start-up WiSolar gears up for growth". BusinessLIVE. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
- ↑ Thukwana, Compiled by Ntando. "SA will soon have an app to buy prepaid solar electricity: Here's how it works". Businessinsider. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
- ↑ "South African Prepaid Startup WiSolar Plans Initial Fund Raise". Bloomberg.com. 2022-01-12. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
- ↑ A, Olumide (2022-01-12). "Tonye Irims' biography: What to know about the Nigerian behind WiSolar". Kemi Filani News. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
- ↑ Adeyemi, Segun (2022-03-23). "Nigerian-born CEO to empower 1000 youths with solar job". Legit.ng - Nigeria news. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
- ↑ A, Olumide (2022-01-12). "Tonye Irims' biography: What to know about the Nigerian behind WiSolar". Kemi Filani News. Retrieved 2022-07-09.
- ↑ "How Nigerian Migrant Entrepreneurs are Building Multi-Million Dollar Businesses in South Africa". Business Elites Africa. 2022-04-08. Retrieved 2022-07-09.
- ↑ siteadmin (2021-01-30). "Nigerian Businessman Attacked In South Africa Offers Reward For Capture Of Assailants". Sahara Reporters. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
External links
This article "Tonye Irims" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.