Lack of Drinks at Friend’s Party Prompted Me To Start Drink.ng, – Lanre Akinlagun

We couldn’t get drinks to serve guests and it was a big challenge for us at that, so that prompted me to fill the vacuum to start drinks.ng

Lanre Akinlagun returns to Nigeria from United Kingdom to start Drinks.ng in 2013, arguably the largest online distributor of beers, spirit, and wine in Nigeria. The brand offers the best of alcoholic and non- alcoholic beverages.

Drinks.ng is the first E-commerce pure play beverage platform in Nigeria with the vision to bridge the gap between consumers and products predominating only available in large quantities within the informal trade.

The platform has turned into an ubiquitous beverage platform spread across different sectors within the industry with a leading beverage platform for sales, and educational blog.

Today, drinks.ng is one of very few starts who are profitable, generating revenues in excess of $5m annually and partnerships with the industry heavy weights such as Diageo, Pernord Ricard, Moet, Hennessy and Many more. They have now also grown within other sectors of the industry with a foot print in e-commerce, Retail, Publication, Distribution and Data trade.

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Surprisingly, Lanre while explaining how he discovered his hundreds thousands dollar liquor business idea said the idea emanated at a friend’s bachelor eve party when he was saddled with the task of organising the party.

“We couldn’t get drinks to serve guests and it was a big challenge for us at that, so that prompted me to fill the vacuum to start drinks.ng”

“I’ve heard about the counterfeit drinks and all sorts of things. I said, “Okay cool, I want to go where they sell the drinks”. I went, they took me to the open market and I was just like, “What is this, where we’ve got into in Nigeria, why this?” And what further drive the idea of drinks.ng

“I told my friends after the wedding, I was like, “Jason, I’ve done you well. It’s time to do me well. It’s time to go and to be honest, Jason and Sebastian were incredibly supportive. They started us up with our first hundred thousand dollars’ investment which is the only investment we’ve gone into today.

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Meanwhile, narrating his early years’ experience in the business, Lanre said the first three years was a difficult phase for him as he struggling to establish his brand in a large market where established brands are on top of their game.

“I would say I wasn’t prepared as much as I should have been prepared to start it up but we grinded it out and we kept it going. This business has died severally but I just had to revive it. Little revenue, but if you’re passionate about the business and you want it to keep going, you want to succeed, you just have to keep being creative and reinventing it”.

Commenting on the challenges of his business, Lanre said fuel scarcity has taken a toll on his business delivery. He also decried how police officers unlawfully detained some of their goods worth hundreds of thousands.

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“I’ve gotten calls in the early days when our delivery men report how police officers seized their bikes when they are expected to deliver to customers four hundred-thousand-naira worth of goods. Customers won’t have the patience when they don’t get their goods.

Giving his advice to the young and aspiring entrepreneurs, he stressed that they should never be in a rush to become entrepreneur but must be ready to learn by willing to give their all to someone and in return they get to learn more about what they want to achieve.

“The quicker you make all the mistakes, the quicker you can fix them and it’s all about speed in this generation. There’s enough materials, tools, information out there to allow you to recover from any mistake. The only way you’re going to gather confidence is by going through something once.