Joshua Oluwatobi Ajayi is a creative and astute entrepreneur https://ng.linkedin.com/in/oluwatobi-ajayi-fica-3058974b, he is the Founder of Nord Automobiles Limited, one of the first truly Nigerian automobile brands and co-founder of Jetvan Automobiles Limited, an authorized dealer of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter in the Nigeria. He is a respected authority in the automobile industry in Nigeria.
As the founder of Nord automobiles limited, the inspiration for incorporating this company to him was the need to start a company that would provide complete, cost-effective and time-efficient transport solutions to people, customers, end users, who find themselves in the minibus transport sector of the Nigerian economy.
HOW IT BEGAN
He started at Mercedes-Benz Nigeria in 2012 where I did his National Youth Service Corp. After service, he was retained, promoted and given the responsibility to control the Mercedes-Benz van division in Nigeria. Within two years, he was able to take the market share of Mercedes-Benz vans from less than 1% to 7%. We won the Mercedes-Benz Best Sales Performance for Africa for 2013.
In 2015, together with some investors, he started Jetvan Automobiles Limited to take the Mercedes-Benz vans sales and after-sales to the next level. After he realised that the minibus transport sector in Nigeria needed a bus like the Mercedes Benz Sprinter because of its durability, quality, comfortability of the seats and the safety features; also, the fact that the vehicle is a lot bigger, so it has more legroom, which adds to the comfort of the vehicle. To him most other brands were not offering that, so he with a group of investors came together and the company was formed. He plans to keep making customers happy to have the vehicle and to be in any transport-related organisations.
He was at Jetvan as CEO until April 2018 when he resigned his position to enable me focus on building the Nord brand and company structure.
RECOGNITIONS
In 2016, in recognition of his contribution to the auto industry, he was nominated for the CEO of the year at the Nigeria Auto Journalist Awards (NAJA), Jetvan won the award for the New Entrant of the year. Oluwatobi is a Fellow of the Institute of Credit Administration. He was listed by Forbes as one of the most promising young entrepreneurs in Africa for 2018.
According to the last valuation, his company is approximately worth a little over N4.2 billion. He presently plans to champion the use of electric vehicles in Nigeria with the building of designated charging structure with a wide network nationwide.
At the age of 30, Oluwatobi Ajayi already became a pioneer in the Nigerian car sales industry.
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