The news comes just months after the company announced that it had secured US$8million in funding from US-based hedge Tiger Global, early investors in Facebook.
Headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria and with offices in London and New York and a staff of almost 100, iROKOtv has brought Nollywood to the African Diaspora, with viewers logging on from over 178 countries across the world. To date, over 9.3 million hours of Nollywood movies have been watched on irokotv.com.
Jason Njoku, CEO and founder of iROKO Partners says, "What an incredible six months it has been for iROKOtv - 500 000 registered users in under six months is an awesome feat for us. We are a relatively young start-up and are super excited to have built up such momentum in such a short space of time.
"The secret of our success to-date is pretty simple; we love what we do, we love Nollywood movies and so do our 500 000 registered users. Content is king and we are unrivalled in what we can offer from our 5 000-strong movie library. The iROKOtv team uploads movies onto the site every single week, so our fans, who we know have a voracious appetite for all things Nollywood, have a constant stream of awesome content at their fingertips.
"Nollywood is a global phenomenon - our fans are scattered all over the world and had previously struggled to get hold of any movies. The iROKOtv platform enables them to watch classic and new films, on a safe, easy to use, beautifully designed site, whether they are on a computer, tablet or on their mobile phone - anywhere in the world. Nollywood has never been so accessible and this is only the beginning for us."
iROKOtv's reports that their largest markets are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany - the site currently has more viewers in London than in Lagos.
The West now has a reliable outlet to access Nollywood movies. However, as Africa comes online and broadband penetration surges, it is expected that the site will see considerable growth in traffic from across the continent, which will position iROKOtv as one of the leading sites for aggregating the African Diaspora.
As of 1 July 2012, iROKOtv is introducing a subscription service, where viewers will retain free access to the current catalogue of Nollywood films, but will also be able to watch brand new, exclusive Nollywood releases, uploaded weekly, for only US$5 per month.
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