Ten winners emerged as winners of N77.5m at the fourth edition of Zenith Bank’s Zenith Tech Fair held under the theme ‘Future Forward 4.0: Embedded Finance, Cybersecurity and Growth Imperatives: The Impact of AI’ held in Lagos.
The prize money was shared among ten finalists who emerged from the over 1,700 contestants who took part in the hackathon, with JumpnPass, a self-checkout technology solution reshaping the retail landscape in Africa coming as the overall winner and taking home the grand prize of N25 million.
In addition, the outfit earned a six-week mentorship and incubation programme designed to help them grow and scale effectively, which will run from December 2024 to February 2025.
The bank said in a statement that the first runner-up, CreditChek , a credit and verification service provider which leverages AI and open banking to streamline income and credit history verification for financial institutions, won N20 million and a mentorship programme.
The second runner-up, Salad Africa, a start-up which offers seamless integration of credit products for digital platforms and software companies won N15 million as well as a mentorship programme.
Other finalists who took home N2.5million each include Regxta, CashAfrica, Middleman, Messenger, Pocketfood, Famasi Africa, Kitovu.
Earlier in her remarks, the GMD/CEO of the bank, Dr Adaora Umeoji, explained that the annual event was created to empower and nurture young fertile minds.
“We hope to produce the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk from the Zenith Bank Hackathon in the nearest future.
“According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 70% of Nigeria’s population are youths which is an economic asset when properly harnessed. This is part of the reason why Zenith Bank is hosting this event to support the development of technology startups.
“Their success not only fosters innovation and growth in Nigeria, but it also plays a vital role in creating employment opportunities for our youth,” she said.
She also spoke on the importance of innovation and embedded finance in ensuring strong and enduring institutions.
“It is paramount that we adapt and adopt technology to stay ahead of the curve.
“We have seen various cases of companies that failed because of their lack of innovation.
“It is quite obvious that when companies fail to innovate; they can easily be displaced, so this is not the time to be orthodox, innovation should be a top priority for us,” she added.
In his goodwill message, the governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu called for a global approach to doing business in the country.
“What we need to do is to be able to enhance our product and services in order to compete in the world. We can’t continue to act local, we need to think global. Anything that we’re doing now, we need to be able to know that we are not just serving a local market, we actually want to serve the global market, and that’s why I’m glad that consistently, for the past four years, I have kept up with the Zenith Tech Fair.
I am sure 5.0 should be bigger and better than what we have today, but for us as a government, what we need to do is to continue to use platforms like this to reassure you of our readiness to provide an enabling environment for your ideas and innovative solutions,” the governor said.
The fair featured the launch of the bank’s digital wallet, EazyByZenith, which will help to support the bank’s retail and financial inclusion strategy.
It also included presentations on the leading technological innovations that cut across different aspects of life, such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, risk management, compliance, financial intelligence, cloud computing and communication technologies.
A world acclaimed strategy and digital implementation specialist, Mr Robin Speculand, delivered a keynote on ‘Banking transformation in a digital world.’
The event also featured goodwill messages by the bank’s chairman, Mr Jim Ovia and the vice president, Mr Kashim Shettima, who was represented by the special adviser to the president on economic matters, Dr. Tope Fasua, Special Adviser to the Presidency on Economic Matters).
Other eminent IT practitioners from top global brands who also made presentations included a global expert on digital transformation and AI, Danilo McGarry, Partner, Africa, AI and Data Leader at Deloitte, Mr Jania Okwechime, and director, Microsoft Worldwide Financial Services, Rupert Nicolay.
The panel session had the client technology lead for Microsoft Inc., Mr Wole Odeyele, as its host, and featured six discussants including the founder and director, Nistad Limited, Ms Ada Jabaru, founder and chief executive officer, MainOne, Ms Funke Opeke, chief executive officer, Orda, Mr Guy Futi, founder, ZamzamPay, Dr Auwal Adam Sa’ad, director general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Mr Kashifu Abdullahi, and director general and chief executive officer, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Mr Bisoye Coker-Odusote.
The Zenith Bank startup pitch competition and incubation programme seeks to identify and fast-track the growth of high-potential Nigerian startups innovating in key sectors, including embedded finance, cybersecurity, fintech, health tech, agri tech, e-commerce, and more.
The programme provides an ideal platform for startups to showcase their groundbreaking ideas and gain access to invaluable resources to scale their businesses.
