One of Nigeria’s leading telecom executives, Lanre Olaniyan, has stepped down from his position as the Managing Director of Omnicom Solutions Limited after 14 years of managing the company’s affairs.
He confirmed the news on Monday, May 16, 2022, and explained that contrary to the usual expectation, he did not quit the company but only decided to step aside to focus on other interests.
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“I’m still part of the Omnicom team, and I only stepped aside as the MD. Knowing that I have given my best to Omnicom, I believe the stage is set for someone new to run the company and take it to greater heights while I sit on the board and give advisory support.
“I am still involved in the business; I am aware of its activities, and I continue to lend my know-how and industry influence to enable the growth of the organization” he explained.
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Known for his private lifestyle, he further revealed that he had reached his decision to step aside for a while due to several reasons but he only made it official in March 2022, describing the development as the latest good news from his over 15-year career in the Nigerian telecom sector, and expressing gratitude to God for the many successes the company achieved under his leadership.
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Omnicom Solutions Limited is a full-service solutions company that offers a wide range of services for GSM, GPRS, UMTS, CDMA and 3G networks. While stressing that the company would remain focused on its vision, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumnus also provided a brief insight into its history.
“Omnicom is my brainchild; I came up with the idea in 2007, and I invited some of my friends to join me, and since then, I’d been the managing partner responsible for the day-to-day operation of the business. I like to see this new development as part of our growth as individuals and as a business,” he opined.
Olaniyan grew Omnicom Solutions from a startup into a multibillion-naira company with several projects in Nigeria and across the West African subregion, as revealed during its 10th anniversary in 2018.
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“In the subsector where we work, we are one of the biggest. Pre-Covid, we had more than 500 staff, and even during-covid, while everybody was downsizing, we were hiring more, and we never stopped working throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I have poured my ideologies about how a company should be into Omnicom, and they have given us amazing results. Omnicom grew from a four-million-naira company to a multibillion-naira company, and I think we have done a lot already. Now, the company can only go higher and get bigger, and I believe I have built the foundation for that to happen.,” he said.
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On his next move after Omnicom, Olaniyan said: “I am involved in many projects and other ventures, and some of those ventures need attention. They need nurturing, just as I did for Omnicom. So those are what I will be dedicating my time to, moving on.”
Mr. Olaniyan says he is passionately working on a tech solution that will help the Nigerian economy retain the foreign exchange that many of its over 48 million SMEs spend on retail software developed in other countries.
“We have created a solution that can help them do the same thing, better than those applications would do, and we are confident that business owners will find it as useful as we believe they will,” he added.
Olanrewaju Olaniyan has his background in Electrical Engineering. He is also an alumnus of The University of Texas at Austin, where he got a Postgraduate Degree in Data Science and Business Analytics.