Andre Thomas is an entrepreneur from Trinidad and Tobago, who co-founded Radial, an internet music-streaming service designed for the Caribbean and the rest of the developing world. During his recent visit to Washington, DC, we interviewed Andre to learn more about his startup, and his plans for growing the business. Radial is one of the startups that participated in the investment readiness and investor engagement training, organized by infoDev/World Bank’s Entrepreneurship Program for Innovation in the Caribbean. Follow Andre on Twitter: @dre4713
Can you tell us a little bit about your business?
Radial (http://www.getradial.com) is the Pandora and Spotify for the developing world. What that means is we are a social, mobile, music streaming service focused on the Caribbean with plans to expand to other developing nations like Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil and India. We found that the other services have a one-size fits all approach where they push western music to the masses. Radial treats each country’s music as the market and pushes that not only to the local market but also to the very large diaspora.
Why did you choose the music streaming industry?
We have domain expertise and deep connections within the Caribbean music industry. I have played musical instruments since I was five. My two cofounders are also in the music industry. Abay Israel has a Masters in Economics yet he still finds time to DJ twice a week. Kit Israel started off in GIS management but quit that job to produce music full time. He produced this year’s wildly successful ‘Kan Kan Riddim’ as well as the title winning song ‘Ola’ . We LOVE music and we paired that with our other skillsets to achieve success.
Suite – http://www.infodev.org/articles/radial-streaming-music-developing-world
