Beat Drone emerges biggest winner of Techfest 2018
By Beat Drone, a startup that provides drone services for farmers emerged the biggest winner at the Techfest 2018 which held in Lagos from 15 to 16 May 2018.
The drone company, one of the featured startups under Passion Incubator, won the N5 million cash prize and N5 million in technical supports from the sponsors of the event. The sponsors include Diamond Bank, Interswitch, Visa, Microsoft, NIBSS, Deloitte, MTN Nigeria and Beat FM.
The Battle of the Hub was the climax of the two days event. Five technology hubs covering the geographical regions of Nigeria participated.
The hubs were Ventures Platform, an Abuja-based pan-African early stage fund and accelerator that actively finds, funds and supports innovative companies solving real problems in Africa. Wennovation Hub from Ibadan is a pioneer innovation accelerator that operates from its offices in Lagos and Ibadan. Colab, another participating hub, is based in Kaduna and offers a collaborative community for startups, innovators, creatives and entrepreneurs. The fourth hub is the Lagos-based Passion Incubator, a technology incubator and accelerator that supports and invests in startups in Nigeria.
Enugu-based Roar Nigeria, a university-focused tech startup incubator established by the management of University of Nigeria Nsukka to bolster innovation amongst students and non-students in the university, makes up the list of five hubs.
The featured startups include Afrimash (Enugu), Pronov (Enugu); GeroCare (Abuja), Thrive Agric (Abuja); Peepscreen (Enugu), TrillzApp (Enugu); SchoolMo (Kaduna), Payant (Kaduna); and Riby (Lagos), Beat Drone (Lagos).
Odionye Confidence, co-founder of Beat Drone told the judges during his pitch, that the prize money will be utilised by the company in purchasing new drone equipments and expanding its services to other parts of the country.
Uzoma Dozie, CEO of Diamond Bank said the vision of Techfest is to drive technology education to people who are yet to embrace it for lack of understanding of how innovations work. Hence, the organisers of the event hope to make it bigger every year.
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