By Eric Elezuo
His technological vision is spread, covering software, engineering, healthcare among many others. He is a person, who has demystified the theory of silver spoon origin as the sure point of success. He has proved even from Ajegunle, stars are born. He is John Niyi Olajide, the brain behind world class enterprises leveled in technological acumen vis a vis Cavista Holdings, a renowned global software engineering solution firm and Axxess Global Partner, a leading global home healthcare technology company.
Endowed with a great can-do attitude, Olajide is an ardent believer in the efficacy of passion, which has seen him through the turbulent world of entrepreneurship, and coming out strong and conquering. He was quoted as saying “I’m very passionate about economic development; about leveraging business and economic investments to improve the lives of everyone and create opportunities for a lot of people.” He is without an iota of doubt a human-oriented businessman.
His Axxess has played and continued to play a major role in shaping the $100 billion home health industry in the USA and the $600 billion global industry, in addition to helping to process over $30 billion in claims for over 3 million patients served by over 9,000 organisations around the globe.
A native of Erinmope-Ekiti, in Ekiti State, Olajide was born and raised in Ajegunle, one of the slums in Lagos State, noted for criminality and other unwholesome activities, yet through a dint of hard work, determination, focus, had one of the meteoric rises to stardom in history.
He attended Nigerian Navy Secondary School, Abeokuta after his nursery and primary education before proceeding to the United States of America for his university education, where he had to work harder to pay his through school. Today, he is both a Nigerian and an American, creating firsts in technological know-hows. It would not be out of place to say that Olajide’s entrepreneurial acumen is both inherent and inherited considering that his father worked his way out of Ajegunle to Ogba where he was a distributor for Unilever.
Other than being a prolific Nigerian-American entrepreneur, Olajide is an investor and an incurable philanthropist, whose humanity speaks volumes. His leap of faith to establish Axxess, world’s leading global home healthcare technology company, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, in 2007, Axxess has like the proverbial oak tree spread and established a presence in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa, and boast of more than 1,200 employees from over 45 countries. Even as he enjoys prominence in inventions and innovations in the US, Olajide remains a man, who knows his roots, noting at every point in time that Africa, and in particular Nigeria, always remained in thoughts. “We have a lot of work to do, but I live every day with the belief that anything is possible,” he once said.
Highly patriotic, he celebrates Nigeria and its teeming youthful population, “Nigeria is the hub for the best brains in the IT sector and software development. It’s my own way of contributing my own quota towards ensuring sustainable growth and opportunities for job creation in the economy. I am passionate about increasing access to quality healthcare for people everywhere in the world and with technology, we can make that possible.
“Nigeria is blessed with highly cerebral youth who are doing great things with limited resources when it comes to all aspects of software development, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the rest. This spurred my interest in partnering with CAVISTA Nigeria.
“Today, CAVISTA is creating solutions to the challenging issues of health care delivery in Nigeria and employing great young minds to solve problems, rather than allowing them to leave Nigeria to use their skills to develop in another country,” he said.
He currently supports and partners with leaders in Africa across government, business, and technology. A rare feat, all in a bid to ensure the continent remains self-sustaining. John is also the Chairman of Cavista Holdings which fully owns Cavista Technology Limited, the global technology company with operations in Nigeria, the Philippines and India. With over 300 software engineers in his employment, he focuses on helping training and developing young talents to solve complex challenges in the Nigerian technology space, while creating job opportunities for development and growth. He has also partnered SheCode to get more female engineers in the process.
Also in his spread of influence, Olajide has set up a world class farm, know as Agbeyewa Farms, an agro-allied company operating in Nigeria, and situated on 50 acres of arable land in Ekiti, with the aim of providing thousands of jobs for the young ones. While most people know him as a tech mogul, his foray into agriculture through the multi-million-dollar Agbeyewa Farms is promoting food security and creating thousands of jobs. Olajide has the aim of restoring the idea of dignity and prosperity in farming. The farm is already making waves in the food cultivation and production industry.
A man of many positive parts, Olajide’s interests also include tourism development, and he holds the concession through his Glocient Hospitality Limited, to revamp Ekiti State’s flagship tourism destination, Ikogosi Warm Springs in Ikogosi-Ekiti, Ekiti West Local Government Area of Ekiti-State into a world-class golfing and vacation. He is equal to the task.
The “100% Nigerian and 100% American is an entrepreneur, investor, care at home innovator and global community builder, who moves easily in all social, political, economic and intellectual circles with the sole aim of building constructive relationships and advance the best ideas to make the world better. With his Axxess Holdings and Cavista Holdings, he is helping improve access to healthcare everywhere and creating tens of thousands of jobs in various industries.
Olajide is not new to awards and recognitions. In 2022, he was appointed Vice Chair of the Board of the Corporate Council on Africa Board, a business association which promotes trade and investment between the US and countries in Africa. His commitment to building a stronger community resulted in him being chosen by his peers to serve in 2020 as the youngest-ever chair of the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce’ board of directors and executive committee, and he successfully led the Dallas business community through the COVID-19 pandemic and shepherded the DRC to create a permanent board-led council to advance diversity, equity and inclusion. He currently serves on multiple boards, including the board of the Presidential Precinct, the Executive Committee of the Dallas Regional Chamber, and the Board of the Dallas Citizens Council where he works with other leaders to provide guidance on the policy issues that will move the region forward.
Through Axxess’ corporate citizenship efforts, John has benefited numerous organizations, including the University of Texas at Dallas, Business Council for the Arts, Texas Women’s Foundation, Visiting Nurses Association of Texas and many more. In 2019, John was named Humanitarian of the Year by Grace for Impact, an international non-profit organization focused on providing access to high quality healthcare.
Olajide has been recognized as the Outstanding Healthcare Executive of the Year and a Leader in Diversity, and AXXESS is recognized nationally and internationally as a Best Place to Work.
In 2016, Olajide was recognized as the youngest-ever Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Texas at Dallas.
He has endowed the largest scholarship fund for the Engineering School for Computer Science students. He is currently chairing the billion-dollar campaign fundraising campaign for the University. He is also co-chair of a capital campaign raising $750 million to provide future opportunities for students at the school. He also serves on the Executive Committee for the Chancellor’s Council of the University of Texas System.
The proud graduate of the University of Dallas, Texas, also serves on several other boards, including the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. He is in the business of helping to attract businesses to the most prosperous region in the United States.
Through his holdings’ corporate citizenship and philanthropic initiatives, Olajide has benefited numerous organizations addressing healthcare, education, poverty and women’s issues, among others, and he is not stopping.
Olajide’s corporate social responsibility is topnotch. He believes strongly in community engagement and invests actively to ensure that the local communities benefit through educational, health, transportation, and other infrastructural schemes, examples of which are numerous.
RARE STORY OF HOW AXXESS STARTED
ThisDay, after an counter with Olajide told the his story of the emergence of Axxess as follows: “…while in college, nothing gave him the clue that he would be involved in the technology of healthcare. Regaling THISDAY of his foray into this field he said while he was in college, he had an aunt that worked for a local healthcare organisation.
One time in 2001, he went to visit her and noticed there were lots of people working at different workstations at different desks. This prompted him to ask questions about their paper works and computer network? When he revealed that there was a tech lacuna, the aunt took him to her boss who expressed interest after hearing the benefits of a computer network.
“This computer network was supposed to help them improve their business, track their revenues, streamline their operations, decrease cost of doing business and help them be more successful as a business and healthcare business. Over all, it would help improve their patients outcomes.
“Immediately, he set out to build a computer network for that organisation.
“Getting the job done, he started getting referrals and with that, he paid his way through school. But beyond that, the opportunity opened his eyes to the tech lacuna in the healthcare industry and he went on to fill it. Backed by his business acumen nurtured way back in Nigeria, his entrepreneurial spirit sprung up and he helped his aunt set up a business.
“First he researched what the licencing and regulatory standards for that type of business in the US was, in the state of Texas in particular. He proceeded to get her licence and everything else she needed. He was just 20 then and the business still exists and thrives.
“With the success recorded, he began to get referrals, “but I realised that here’s an industry that’s underserved from a technology perspective. Overall, they need to help and I saw the ability to create technology”. And so he did.
“Giving a break down of what the job entails he said it made the healthcare industry benefit from cloud-based technology or web-based software in the clouds to help them be more efficient.
“Noting that the old order of documentation was not effective he thought to create technology that provides excellent health care and gets information in real time. With this, it decreased cost of business and boosted efficiency.”
Olajide has done well, not just for himself, and his beloved Ekiti, but for humanity in general.
Let’s raise a toast to Nigeria’s own export in human capacity development, technology transfer and a czar in tech problem solving.
Congratulations sir, you are our boss of the week!
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