247Medic, a Nigerian healthtech startup has been named among the winners of the African App Launchpad Cup whose grand finale was held on the sidelines of the RiseUp Summit 2019 at American University in Cairo (AUC).
247Medic is an online (subscription-based) medical care consultation and advisory service; providing patients in cities and rural areas the ability to call or chat with a doctor, request on-site laboratory services at the comfort of their home and get drugs delivered to their doorsteps.
The startup alongside Egypt’s Find Me Football both received $7,500 in the application development track.
The track’s first prize went to Bouita from Algeria and was rewarded with$15,000.
For the gaming track, Agora from Egypt won the first prize, worth $15,000, while Alkottab Game Studio walked away with $10,000 for the second prize and Arcanium Studios came third, winning $5,000.
The selected startups were chosen from a group of 28 finalists from more than nine countries across Africa. This year, over 190 startups applied to present at the pitch competition.
The African App Launchpad Cup is an initiative of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), in collaboration with RiseUp enterprise.
ITIDA vice president, Hassan Othman said in a statement that all the competing ideas were innovative and across diverse industries such as health, sports, and tourism, adding that there were a lot of creative ideas from Nigeria, Algeria, and Egypt.
“We would like to thank Egypt for hosting the first of a kind competition in Africa and praise the government’s role in supporting entrepreneurship across Africa,” the statement read.
“We were impressed when we saw how the entrepreneurship scene across Africa is generating innovative ideas like what we saw at the pitch competition today.
“Collaborating with ITIDA on the African App Launchpad Cup is another step that we believe will widen the opportunities we are offering to the startups through the RiseUp summit, ”Abdel-Hamid Sharara, co-founder and CEO of RiseUp, said.
The winners got a chance to join an accelerator program and were granted exhibition spaces during the RiseUp Summit, in addition to certified training grants for all teams through the African App launch pad.
For Amr Kamel, managing director of 5D, and one of the competition’s judges, he stated that it has been a very interesting competition, as it witnessed some strong applications and propositions, both from Africa and Egypt.
“It makes us very proud to see the young generation and what they are capable of. I think it was quite hard to choose the winners but it was successful in terms of people’s choices,” he said.
ITIDA collaborated with RiseUp to launch the pitch competition in Africa a few months ago. The competition invited startups working in either gaming or application development from nine different African countries to participate in the contest that offers grants totaling $60,000.
