‘I quit my job at Dangote and then traveled to China to start a company’

Updated April 9, 2025

We spoke to DC about how his passion to start his company made him quit his job and travel to China.

Hey DC, how are you doing today? 

I’m alright; it’s just a typical Monday morning with a lot of work, so I’m trying to clear out my tasks.

Nice, well done.

Thanks.

Tell me about yourself.

I’m DC; I like to describe myself as curious because I always want to know new stuff. I’m also the CEO of Dropper, a logistics solution. I’m passionate about solving the logistics problem in Africa; that’s why we started Dropper.

This is great. Speaking of work, what’s the first company you ever started?

 Lmaoo. This brings back funny memories. The first business I ever started was a pastry business. At the time, my Dad gave me N1,000,000 to start the business. I used 80% of the money to do branding for the business. Before I realized anything, I only had 20% of the money left to start operations and run the company.

Anyway, I started. I called the company ‘Rich pie’ — I sold meat pie. I didn’t even know how to make meat pie then; I just used to check google and come up with different stuff. Sometimes, the meat pie would be as big as a loaf of bread because I put too much baking powder.

My Dad knew it would die, Lmaoo, so we watched me fail.

This is hilarious! Lmaoo

It’s funny now sha. It wasn’t funny then because I had employed two people, and I felt so horrible that they no longer had jobs when the business failed.

That sucks. What did you do after the business failed?

After the business failed, I got a 9 -5. I worked at Nestle, stayed there for a while, then moved to Dangote. From Dangote, I traveled to China to start a business.

Oh, why did you leave Dangote for China?

I dropped out of school, so all the companies I worked at never took me as a full-time staff; I was always a contract staff. It was the same thing at Dangote. I wasn’t interested in renewing my contract yearly, so I quit. While at Dangote, I was inspired to start a company again. I felt more equipped this time, so I took a stab at it. I picked China because I thought it was the best and cheapest place to start the business I had in mind. After all, it heavily involved manufacturing.

Makes sense. How did China go?

Oh, it was interesting. I was young then, so the person I was working with found it odd that I was so small. Lmao. I also didn’t understand anything about sharing equity, so I ended up owning 10% of my company while my investors got 90%. As time passed, I wasn’t comfortable with this arrangement, so I told my investors I was leaving the company.

Ugh. That’s sad.

Oh, it’s okay. At least, I know better now. I started another business right after that.

Interesting. What was this new business about?

It was a Logistics business. Logistics in China works so well, so I wanted to replicate the same for a place like Nigeria. I started this new company to experiment with how it’ll work before going all in, so I started with 100 people on a WhatsApp group. Things were going smoothly for a short while, but something interesting happened. 

Merchants on the WhatsApp group started creating other WhatsApp groups with many other people and fulfilling their group members’ orders on the group I created.

Things got messy because the orders were too much; the person I employed started to mix up parcels. Some people did not get their parcels, and I had to pay for them. The money ran into millions. It was a bad experience, so I shut down the business.

This is a lot. I’m sorry that happened.

Thank you. I’m running Dropper now; I have way more experience with the Logistics business — I know what works and what doesn’t, and I’m super excited about how Dropper will improve Logistics in Africa.