#cregital

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Nestled in the bustling environs of Adeniran Ogunsanya, Surulere is the office of a young entrepreneur fast making a name for himself in Lagos’ digital design and marketing circles. He was featured on Y!Naija magazine and even earned an honourable mention on the international scale. His name? Evans Akanno, the 26-year-old founder of Zegist and CEO of Cregital.

The office has an air of creativity about it, with white walls, white office furniture and grey floor tiles – the only exception being a black sofa and bean bag in the reception area. A bold sign over the sofa reads CREGITAL, The CEO walks out to greet us and without much ado, we start our little chat.

Q: So let’s meet you… – My name is Evans Akanno and i’m an entrepreneur with a passion for design and marketing. I’m the founder and CEO of Cregital, Zegist.

Q: What do you do exactly? – I head the Cregital team; a design agency focused on design, marketing, technology and how these elements can be used to grow businesses. We combine these elements working with clients to empower their businesses, helping them compete with bigger brands. As a creative agency, we’re meticulously detailed on visuals and engagements, the look, the feel and we try to make designs work like what you see outside the country. For every brand here in Nigeria, there are foreign counterparts that seem light years ahead and what we do is to bring them up to speed. We have business and product managers, designers, developers and content specialists who everyday work with clients on different projects in a relaxed atmosphere that fosters the creative juice. We’re also responsible for Zegist – an online community where users can share opinions, start conversations or ask questions on different matters they generate.

Q: How long have you been an entrepreneur? – Actively, I would say one year; although I was a freelancer in 2010 after my graduation from school. Looking back, I don’t think freelancers are really entrepreneurs because an entrepreneur would build a team, motivate them and all those things I’ve done in the past one year. So I’ve not been an entrepreneur for so long, but i’m growing in that area.

Q: What’s your entrepreneurship drive? – What drives me is the urge to create a company where people walk in with zero knowledge of anything and provided they have the passion to learn and apply, we can make a big kill out of it. Any company that would stand the test of time is one that focuses on its people because it’s people that make the company. I’m not driven by profit; I’m driven by people.

Q: What are your milestones so far? – I started the agency as a freelancer working from home and got a day job with Rocket Internet – the guys that own Jumia – as part of the pioneer team. I actually designed the Jumia logo in use till today. There, I had to work with foreigners who only wanted the best designs and pushed me to extremes. Moving on to work with Konga impressed the importance of teamwork on me, that a business isn’t grown with individual genius but rather collaborative effort. These were huge milestones for me before I moved into entrepreneurship and started up Cregital with a better structure and a team.

Q: Any awards or accolades to your name so far? – Last year when we launched our website, we received an honourable mention from AWWWARDS, an international body that reviews websites. This year, I got recognized by Y!Naija as one of the promising entrepreneurs in the country.

Q: How did the recognition make you feel? – It felt good to know someone’s watching. You know a lot of entrepreneurs work without knowing people see what they do. But knowing that people see your efforts and recognise what you do is good for business too.

Q: What’s the grand dream? –  I would say there’s a short-term dream and a long-term dream. The short-term dream of Cregital in the next five years is to have a staff level of about 200, making at least $1million profit in a year. Then I can take off for a week and say we’ve arrived.

Q: How do you balance work, play and responsibility? – Right now, I work round the clock. The business requires that I do. I work the hardest because my job during the day is to help my team get better and at night is when I do my job. I still live a balanced life to an extent. My work is relaxed. I spend about an hour or two with family in the evenings and on the weekends I try to make out time to meet with friends over movies or pepper soup.

Q: What’s your relationship angle? – My angle on relationships is this: if you’re to date anybody, date them as though you want to marry them and if you stop seeing yourself marrying them, let them know. Fix whatever needs to be fixed and If you can’t, walk away knowing you put your best into that relationship.

With that in our bag, we shook hands and called it a day. But not before we took some pictures for the road. See below.

Evans Akanno: 26-year-old tycoon with the digital touch Nestled in the bustling environs of Adeniran Ogunsanya, Surulere is the office of a young entrepreneur fast making a name for himself in Lagos' digital design and marketing circles.

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Introducing Cregital: Making smart First Impressions using Intelligent Design

Introducing Cregital: Making smart First Impressions using Intelligent Design

What exactly is design? A bright logo? A neatly customized WordPress theme? Eye-catching UI or a great photo? For Cregital, design is much more than any of the above. It is a state of mind. It is a lifestyle, the very essence of what they do.

Founded by ex Jumia and Konga digital design and marketing guru, Evans Akanno, Cregital (pronounced ‘cray-gital’, origin, Creative Digital) is a budding…

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