Caption: From left, Group Managing Director/CEO, Zenith Bank Plc, Dr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu (Centre) flanked from left by Executive Director, Zenith Bank Plc, Dr. Temitope Fasoranti; Founder, Skill up with Kahdsole (SUWK), Chioma Ukpabi; Co-founder, Sync, Princess Edokpayi, and Co-founder/CEO, Tribapay, Bolu Oluwagbesan during the presentation of cash prizes to the winners of the Zecathon at the Zenith Tech Fair 3.0 held at Eko Convention Centre, Eko Hotels & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, yesterday.
The third edition of the Zenith Bank Tech Fair with the theme: “Future Forward 3.0,” in Lagos ended Thursday, with Sync, a team collaboration and workflow management platform emerging the overall winner of the Hackathon (Zecathon).
Sync, a synergy provider that enables project management, task planning, messaging, payments, scheduling and people operations, emerged winner of the N20m grand prize from over 500 participants at Hackathon.
The prize money, according to a statement by the bank is in addition to a mentorship programme with Seedstars, a company dedicated to implementing high-quality capacity-building programmes for entrepreneurs in emerging markets.
The first runner-up, Skill Up With Kahdsole (SUWK), a social-tech startup that provides an end-to-end platform for learning technical and vocational skills to empower young people, won N15m and a mentorship programme with Seedstars, while the second runner-up, Tribapay, a payment processing gateway that allows for cross-border payments and transactions in Nigeria and Ghana, won N10m as well as a mentorship programme also with Seedstars. Other finalists who took home N2m each include: Edupoint, Joovlin, Frootify, Izesan Limited, Natal Cares, Plychain.io, and Niteon.
Welcoming participants to the Zenith Bank flagship Tech Fair, an excited Group Managing Director/CEO of Zenith Bank Plc, Dr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu, acknowledged that it was indeed the high point of the overall event which was deliberately kept for the last.
According to him, “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 that the pitches you see presented are completely different from the ones we have seen before and we intend to make it far more elaborate as we hope that as we go into the future, we should be able to bring back winners where they can tell the audience their journey and how they have progressed so far,” he added.
The two-day Tech Fair which was described as a huge success by participants, featured presentations on the leading technological innovations that cut across different aspects of life, such as Artificial Intelligence, Contactless Payments, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, FinTech, Data Analytics, Financial Intelligence, and communication technologies, with the keynote address,” “Artificial Intelligence – Application & Bias “, delivered by Chris Lu, the renowned IT Specialist, business strategist and Managing Director for Huawei Technologies, Nigeria.
Apart from the welcome address by Dr. Onyeagwu, who is also Chairman of the Body of Banks’ CEOs, Nigeria, the event also featured a goodwill messages by the Honourable Minister of Communication, Innovation & Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani and Dr. Doris Anite, Hon. Minister of Industry, Trade & Investment (represented by Dr. Femi Adeluyi, National Coordinator for the National Talent Programme).
Other eminent IT practitioners from top global brands who also made presentations include: Demola Sanusi, Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services; Temitope Aladenusi, Partner & Leader Cybersecurity, Deloitte; Andrew Uaboi, Vice President/Cluster Head, Visa West Africa; Dr. Blaise Ijebor, Director of Risk Management, CBN; Keelan Singh, Head, UiPath EMEA Banking and Financial Services; Shweta Juneja, Partner, McKinsey Digital; Wole Odeleye, Financial Services Technology Lead, Microsoft; Ope Ajayi, Founder & CEO, Cinemax; Elo Umeh, and Managing Director of Terragon.
The fair featured two panel sessions, the first panel pf which examined “The next frontier: Digital Wallets, Contactless payments and BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later)”, hosted by Chris Lu, with five discussants, such as Fey Wong, Country Director, Palmpay; Premier Oiwoh; Managing Director, Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS); Vincent Ogbunude, Managing Director, Verve; Ebehijie Momoh, Country Manager, MasterCard, and Managing Director of Network International, Adelola Agbebiyi.
The second panel explored the theme “The intersection of Fintech, eCommerce and SMEs – Collaboration for growth”. It was hosted by John Obidi and had five discussants, including Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, Chief Executive Officer, Konga; Tunde Kehinde, Managing Director, Lydia; Stan Martins, Regional Director, Meta; John Obaro, Chief Executive Officer, Systemspecs, and Seyi Banigbe, Founder of Bland2Glam.
