How Mark Essien’s new startup hit $2.3m revenue in four months with fewer than 30 customers

Mark Essien, the Nigerian entrepreneur best known as the founder of Hotels.ng, has launched a new business that is already drawing attention for its early performance. The company, TripDesk, generated about $2.3 million in revenue within four months of launching, despite having fewer than 30 customers.

Essien, who previously built Hotels.ng into one of Nigeria’s best-known online hotel booking platforms, said TripDesk was created to solve a specific problem he encountered while running his first company. The first company handled frequent staff travel, and managing flights, hotels, invoicing and approvals became increasingly complex as the business grew. Existing travel management tools, he explained, did not properly address the needs of African companies.

The new company was built as a corporate travel management platform, designed to help companies manage work-related travel in one place. It handles flight bookings, hotel reservations, expense tracking and reporting for businesses that frequently move staff across cities and countries. Rather than targeting individual travellers, it focuses on companies and organisations.

According to Essien, the strong revenue figure was driven by a small number of large corporate clients. TripDesk had fewer than 30 customers during its first four months, but these were enterprise clients with significant travel budgets. This meant the platform did not need a large user base to reach multimillion-dollar revenue.

Essien has described this new startup as a capital-efficient business, noting that it did not require heavy marketing spend to attract customers. Most early users came through direct sales and existing networks. The company operates with a lean team, reflecting Essien’s long-standing preference for sustainable growth rather than rapid expansion.

Unlike the first company, which targeted consumers across Nigeria, this new one is positioned as a business-to-business product with regional and global ambitions. Essien has said the company is designed to serve African firms operating across borders, as well as international organisations with teams on the continent.

The launch of TripDesk comes years after Hotels.ng faced funding and operational challenges, experiences that Essien has openly discussed. He has said those lessons influenced how this new company was structured, particularly around cost control, pricing and customer selection.

TripDesk remains privately owned, and Essien has not announced plans to raise external funding. He has indicated that the company is focused on refining its product and deepening relationships with existing customers rather than chasing rapid scale.

For Essien, TripDesk represents a return to building quietly, focusing on revenue, product usefulness and long-term sustainability. Its early performance suggests that there is strong demand for specialised corporate travel tools built with African businesses in mind.