The second edition of TechCrunch Start-up Battlefield Africa held yesterday in Lagos, Nigeria and 15 start-ups across the continent pitched at the event. M-SCAN, start-up from Uganda won the coveted title of “Africa’s Favourite Start-up” as well as a $25,000 equity-free grand prize and a trip for two to TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019.
M-SCAN develops portable mobile ultrasound devices – compatible with laptop, tablet and mobile devices. The jury panel were overwhelmed with its potential to make medical devices accessible at an inexpensive fee in Africa, where maternal mortality rate is literarily high.
Bettr from South Africa – a virtual banking experience powered by smartphone – was the runner-up. The company aims to make banking more accessible for the unbanked in South Africa.
Battlefield Africa by TechCrunch kicked-off last year in Kenya’s capital – Nairobi. This year’s edition was hosted in Lagos with support from Facebook SSA. The well attended event featured fireside chats, panel discourse and pitches. From the pool of startups that applied to pitch, the following made the cut and grace the Battlefield Africa stage to pitch:
Complete Farmer – has made farming easy. You can meet expert farm builders to start farming and manage your farm from the ease of your home. It enables users to invest in sustainable farms and monitor farming activities anywhere using data-driven cultivation protocols and IoT-enabled precision farming.
CodeLn – which knowingly reduced the time used to source for developers for your software projects. The company automates the entire recruitment process, making it fast and easy for you to find and test Software Developers so as to reduce bad hires.
Apollo Agriculture – aids farmers in emerging markets to maximize their profits. They explore agronomic machine learning, remote sensing, and mobile to deliver financing, farm products, and customized advice to smallholder farmers with radical efficiency and scalability.
Sudpay – developed an integrated, multi-support, multi-service and multi-operator digital tax collection platform that connects merchants to financial institutions.
LabTech – developed UriSAF – a urine testing hardware and software solution to hasten the diagnosis of Uterine Tract Infections (UTIs).
Bankly – An innovative financial product that reaches the unbanked in Africa, in a “Recharge to Save” model. It developed a cash-digitization payment and savings products, in which users pay using Bankly vouchers.
Pineapple – an insurtech platform where members pay premiums into their own wallets rather than a central pot. When claims occur, they are distributed to all wallets in the community, which collectively help pay for the claim.
Trend Solar – aims to light up the lives of millions of Africans living off-grid. It assimilates a 4G Android Smartphone and Solar Home System to provide affordable access to energy, internet and mobile in an all-in-one solution.
Powerstove Energy – revolutionary clean-cook stove technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is a built-in self-powered IoT System for real-time monitoring. Its 100 percent smokeless biomass cookstove cook food faster and burns 70 times less fuel using processed proprietary water-resistant Goodlife Biomass Pellets.
FoodHubs – makes use of mobile solar-powered cold carts and cold rooms to help smallholder farmers store their produce, so as to avoid post-harvest losses.
Honey Flow Africa – Optimizes beekeeping operations by digitizing and bringing the power of IoT to the beekeeping process to improve honey production, processing and predictability.
Agripredict – Provides farmers with tools that equips them with information to improve disease prediction, pest infestations and extreme weather conditions.
MAX – logistics platform that transforms moto-taxi mobility in Africa using mobile app. MAX enables financial inclusion for drivers, prioritizes safety and uses IoT technology to track all drivers in real time.
The startups pitched to a jury made up of Facebook’s Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Bosun Tijani; Co-Creation Hub, Temi Marcella Awogboro; Kairos Angels and Jason Njoku of Iroko TV. While none of them failed to impress, MScan was named the deserved winner on the strength of the size of the problem their solution is targeted at, innovation and ability to scale.