STEPHEN AKINTAYO STEPS UP AS GTEXT GROUP CHAIRMAN AS INTERNATIONAL COMPANY GETS NEW CEO; ADVISES FOUNDERS ‘NOT TO BE CEO FOREVER’
By Oki Samson, Trek Africa Newspaper
L-R: CEO, GTEXT Group, Rana Ayar with the Chairman, GTEXT Group, Dr. Stephen Akintayo
The Founder of multimillion dollar business enterprise, GTEXT Group, Dr. Stephen Akintayo over the weekend announced his exit from the role of the Group CEO of the organization. He has stepped up to become the Group’s Chairman paving way for investment banker, Rana Ayar to become the Group’s CEO.
This audacious move, Trek Africa Newspaper can report, is to bring corporate governance structure to the international enterprise, GTEXT Group, with huge interest in the real estate global market. This will enable the organization to attract institutional funding and will detach the business outlook from the personality outlook of the Founder, Dr. Stephen Akintayo.
Announcing this decision at a dinner with mentees and investors over the weekend, Dr. Stephen Akintayo recalled glowingly how he started out in business. ‘GTEXT started in 2008 as a bulk SMS company with about N1000. We were buying SMS from a website but gradually we owned our website. Then later we started doing websites for others. In 2025, we have become the largest having multinationals like Toyota, PZ, etc doing business with us.’
‘The same 2015 we diversified into real estate. 8 years later, we are in Dubai, USA, UK, and spreading across different African countries’, Akintayo recalled.
‘I decided to step down as Group CEO because what we need now is institutional funding which is not really my forte. It is no longer a Nigerian company, we need to bring someone on the global level. What I know is buying and selling, vision and strategy which I will still do as Chairman but the Group CEO will now run all the subsidiaries while we have several CEOs who will do more of the day-to-day activities. You will be glad to know that some of the CEOs started with us as interns.’
‘It is good for it to be broken down into sizeable chunk for them to be able to manage rather than lump everything together and it is just getting bigger and bigger. GTEXT Homes sell houses, GTEXT Lands is selling sites and lands, GTEXT Invest is trying to get investors, GTEXT and Associates is working with partners who are coming to help us sell and are getting returns on anything they sell. So each of the subsidiaries does something different and they all have their employees’, Trek Africa Newspaper gathered.
Dr. Akintayo advised founders, ‘As a founder, you don’t need to be the CEO forever and you don’t have to be aged before you hand over. Bill Gates didn’t wait until he was aged before he handed over at Microsoft and it doesn’t mean he is not there to assist them with ideas so I am still able to do that as Chairman.
The new CEO of the Group, Rana Ayar speaking on the task shared: ‘My background is in investment banking. We have a saying that capital is not stupid, it always finds it way to the right product or service irrespective of geographical location. We are bringing corporate governance structure. He is the owner so we want to separate his person from the business.’
Ayar who has years of experience in the construction industry revealed to Trek Africa Newspaper, ‘I see a lot of interests from Dubai, Switzerland, etc. but as long as the structure is not right, we have a challenge in Africa. We are not trying to raise bulk funding but smart funding on a project by project basis. In the USA, we just secured a 200 million dollars investment’.
