Out of the 15 startups that pitched to a live audience of VCs, investors, government officials, developers and other startups in Lagos at the Startup Battlefield Africa, Uganda’s mSCAN emerged winner of the $25,000 cash in equity-free.
mSCAN is an ultrasonic probe and software that supports ultrasound scanning in low-resource areas. It is portable and compatible with laptop,tablet and mobile phones. All it does is monitor a baby’s vitals and conditions, in return saving the lives of the unborn babies with abnormalities.
The prototype probe can be bought or rented by maternal hospitals, private clinics,and other health centers.
According to TechCrunch, The team impressed the judges with the innovation’s “scalability potential to make many other medical access devices affordable for Africa, where mother and infant mortality is unforgivably high.”
The award makes mSCAN “Africa’s Favorite Startup”and it also qualifies the winners for a trip of two to compete in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch’s flagship event,Disrupt in 2019.
South Africa’s Better finance, which utilizes smartphones and user data to offer virtual banking services, emerged runner-up.
This year’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield was the second edition, following the first edition that debuted in Nairobi, Kenya in 2017.
The Battlefield is supported by Facebook.
The other startups that participated were
- ApolloAgriculture
- LabTech
- Sud-pay
- FoodHubs
- HoneyFlow Africa
- AgriPredict
- Max
- CodeLn
- Bankly
- PowerstoveEnergy
- Pineapple
- Trend Solar.
