M-SCAN emerges Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising Startup

M-SCAN, a company that develops portable mobile ultrasound devices has emerged the Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising Startup at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa 2018, which held in Lagos with a grand prize of $25,000 (USD).

Bettr, a virtual banking experience powered by the smartphone and data emerged the runner up.

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa 2018, sponsored by Facebook, sought to find Sub-Saharan Africa’s best innovators, makers and technological entrepreneurs. The first Africa’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield held last year in Nairobi, Kenya.

Fifteen African companies were shortlisted from hundreds of entries and competed to be chosen as Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising Startup.

The overall winning startup’s founders will be awarded US$25,000 in cash plus a trip for two to compete in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch’s flagship event, Disrupt in 2019.

This is a valuable boost for the winner in a continent where funding—particularly venture capital investment—is in short supply.

Since 2007, 778 Battlefield startups have raised a collective $8.5 billion in funding after launching on stage, with a total of 105 exits.

In the past year, TechCrunch has held Startup Battlefield across the globe in cities including Sao Paulo, Beirut, Sydney and Nairobi.

In Startup Battlefield  Africa, M-SCAN follows in the footsteps of the 2017 winner, Lori Systems, which has significantly grown revenue, headcount and geographical reach since competing in the event.

According to the editor at large of TechCrunch, Mike Butcher, Africa’s tech ecosystems is really coming into its own as successful entrepreneurs scale up their businesses and achieve good exits and IPOs.

“The strength of the entries for this year’s Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 confirms that there is no shortage of creative inventors, makers and entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.

“At Facebook, nothing excites us more than supporting the work of diverse talent and young businesses; so we have been thrilled to see some of Africa’s innovative and disruptive start-ups tell their stories at Startup Battlefield 2018,” Facebook’s head of Developer Programmes, Emeka Afigbo, said.