Ghanaian startup Trukrtech emerges winner of N1 million at TechCircle’s Pitch2Win competition

Truckrtech, an online marketplace for listing and booking of third-party trucks has won N1 million equity-free funding as the top startup from Pitch2Win, 2019 edition.

Pitch2Win is a competition launched by TechCircle, in partnership with Japan’s FreakOut Holdings, to find the most disruptive startups in Nigeria, and give them local and international investment opportunities.

Founded in 2018 by Caryl Joshua Akonor, Truckrtech gives real-time visibility, cargo-in-transit insurance and proper communication channels to shippers and drivers.

Call for application made early in May 2019 got over 200 entries across Africa. This was followed by a rigorous screening session then selection of 10 finalists, all culminating in the grand finale where selected startups will have to battle for N1 million equity-free funding.  

The winning startup, TruckrTech fought its way through to beat other 9 impressive startups all aiming for the grand prize. Judges were impressed with its scalability potential to multiply their trucks and expand services beyond Ghana.   

We did our pilot between January and April and started full operations in May 2019. Between May and June, we’ve done $12,000 in revenue. We can look to 15% month on month revenue increase with this funding from Pitch2Win

Caryl Joshua Akonor, Founder, TruckrTech

The panel of judges included Dr Ola Brown (FlyingDoctors & Greentree Capital Investments), Dr Femi Kuti (Reliance HMO), Yuzuru Honda (Freakout Holdings), Babara Iyayi, (Lateral Capital/Element Inc.) and Hiro Mashita (M&S partners).

Pitch2Win runner-ups were Asusu, a SaaS startup digitising the financial activities of low income and daily earners, and Prodigy, a school management software based in Nigeria.

Other chosen startups selected from the 200 entries received were:

Gricd Frij: an IoT startup that provides an affordable and portable cold chain device for efficient storage of vaccines, blood and other health/agricultural products. Oghenetega Iortim launched Gricd Frij in 2017

LendSqr: a convenient cloud platform for individual and small lenders to provide credit at zero upfront cost and reduced loan loss. The fintech solution has been the brainchild of Adedeji Olowe from 2018

Plumter: Created by Simi Adejumo in 2018, Plumter is an AI-powered solution that helps you schedule, coordinate and keep records of your meetings and tasks in a beautiful, everlasting calendar.

CashBuddy: enables Nigerians to receive and send money using mobile airtime, withdraw cash, buy mobile data and pay bills with or without the internet. Founded by Rosanje Michael.

Curacel: an AI-powered fraud detection engine that puts a tap on that leak by automating claims processing and putting claims through an intelligent. In 2017, Henry Mascot founded Curacel.

Driversng: providing on-demand drivers recruitment digitally since 2016. Founder – Daniel Audu

Aidahbot: an AI solution that helps businesses automate their customer interaction.Founded in 2018 by Nancy Ewurum.

In the last edition of the competition, 12 startups were selected to pitch before foreign and local investors. Kangpe (now RelianceHMO), a health tech startup founded by Femi Kuti emerged winner, before proceeding to win Seedstars World Competition, and securing investment from Y Combinator.

Oo Nwoye, Founder, TechCircle, says that all startups that pitched were exceptional. But beyond that, the opportunity it gave for all participants to tell their own stories and connect to a pool of investors was more than satisfactory.

“As I always say, Pitch2Win is more like a match-making event for young startups and investors. We had investors fly in from Japan, scouting for young emerging businesses to help scale and it’s amazing they got what they came for. I am particularly happy for the winning startup. The founder took a bold step to fly in from Ghana, and thankfully, his self-belief brought a positive outcome” said Oo Nwoye

Yuzuru Honda CEO, Freakout Holdings, equally noted “This is a great event and it’s amazing to be part of it. This is my first time in Nigeria and I am very excited about the energy of young startups in this space. We definitely look to doing more”

Besides the grand prize, all participating startups had the privilege to relate with both international and local investors present at the event, network with diverse audience, which included stakeholders, fellow entrepreneurs, policy makers,and potential partners, as well as build strong networks needed to scale their businesses.

The Pitch2Win competition by TechCircle is proudly sponsored by Japan’s Freakout Holdings and supported by RelianceHMO, PiggyVest, The Longe Practice, Ingressive, DOA Law, Impact Hub Lagos and Ventures Platform.

Pitch2Win by TechCircle first held in 2016 and will return even bigger and better than this edition.