Zenith Tech Fair 3.0 Ends on A High With Cash Prizes Awarded to Hackathon Finalists 

The Third edition of the Zenith Bank tech fair, themed “Future forward 3.0”, which was held on November 23rd-24th, 2023, at the Eko Hotels & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos Nigeria, concluded on a high note, with outstanding hackathon finalists awarded cash prizes.

The event which had in attendance over a thousand participants, had the presence of the Executive Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economics, Bosun Tijani, with several other notable personalities.

In his welcome address at the Zenith Tech fair, the Group Managing Director/CEO of Zenith Bank Plc, Dr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu, expressed his excitement for this year’s Hackathon, stating that it was no doubt a high point of the event.

He said,

“We have deliberately kept the best for the last. The high point of today’s event is the Hackathon. This is where we have the opportunity to see the immense creativity and talent in our youth as they come up with different innovative ideas.” 

“The good thing about the Hackathon is the pitches you see presented are completely different from the ones we have seen before, and we intend to make them far more elaborate as we hope that as we go into the future, we should be able to bring back winners who can tell the audience their journey and how they have progressed so far”, he added.

From the over 500 contestants who applied for the Hackathon (Zecathon) event, only 10 contestants were selected to pitch their innovative startup ideas at the tech fair.

These startups comprised fintechs, health tech, Edutech, and Social-tech startups, amongst others. They include Edupoint, Frootify, Sync, SUWK, Tribapay, Joovlin, Izesan Limited, Niteon, Natal Cares, and Plychain.io.

After their pitches which thrilled the audience, Sync, a team collaboration and workflow startup, emerged as the winner of the Hackathon event, taking home a cash price of N20 million.

Skill Up With Kahdshole (SUWK), a social tech startup that provides an end-to-end platform for learning technical and vocational skills to empower young people, emerged as the first runner-up, taking home a cash prize of N15 million.

At third position, was Tribapay, a Fintech company that enables cross-border payments and transactions in Nigeria and Ghana, which took home a cash prize of N10 million.

Other Hackathon finalists which include Plychain, Edupoint, Niteon, Izesan Limited, Frootify, Natal Cares, and Joovlin, took home N2 million each.

During the presentation of the prize money to the finalists, Zenith Bank reiterated its readiness to provide the necessary mentorship and support to the startups, to enable them scale their business, while describing all of them as winners.

Other activities at the Zenith Tech Fair 3.0 featured two-panel sessions; The first which examined the topic, “The Next Frontier: Digital Wallets, Contactless Payments and BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later)”, has Chris Lu, MD Huawei as the moderator, with other participants which include, Fey Wong, Country manager, Palmpay; Premier Oiwoh, MD NIBSS, Vincent Ogbunude, MD Verve, Ebehijie Momoh, Adeola Agbebiyi, MD, Network International, and Ebehijie Momoh, Country Manager, MasterCard.

The second-panel session examined the topic, “The Intersection of Fintech, e-commerce SMEs; Collaboration For Growth”. This session was moderated by John Obidi, Moderator and Founder of Headstart Africa, with other panelists which include, Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, CEO Konga, Tunde Kehinde, Managing Director Lydia,  Stanislaus Martins, Regional Director, Meta, John Obaro, Chief Executive Officer, SystemSpecs, and Seyi Banigbe, Founder of Bland2Glam.

The event also featured masterclasses which were held on the first day and the second day of the event, where participants were taught by industry experts on the topics, Cybersecurity in Digital Transformation: Challenges and Solutions, Cloud Computing: Potential for Enhancing Business Operations, Blockchain Technology: Applications and Challenges and Metaverse Interactive Entertainment and Payment systems.