• Eight startups participated in the AfricaIgnite Pitch Competition this week held at AfricaCom/Africa Tech Festival.
• The overall winner of the competition was Delta Scan which uses drones to create highly-detailed 3D scans of infrastructure.
• Delta Scan will be heading to the Start-Up World Cup being held in the US on 1st December.

This week one of the biggest telecommunications expos and conferences took place in Cape Town. AfricaCom/ Africa Tech Festival is an annual event and this year the event played host to the AfricaIgnite Pitch Competition.

This competition saw startups pitching to judges in hopes of securing a spot at the Start-Up World Cup happening in the US on 1st December. Ultimately, Delta Scan won the pitch competition and will be heading to the US.

Founded by a team comprising of civil engineers. structural engineers and Geographic Information System (GIS) professionals, Delta Scan offers 3D digitisation to build models that business and property owners can use to improve their efficiency, bring down costs and garner comprehensive information for decision-making.

“I appreciate the belief the judges have in me, it helps with motivation. We’re on a good trajectory and it helps fuel the fire. We’re looking forward to taking this to the global stage,” managing director at Delta Scan, Darryl Epstein said after winning the competition.

Rather than manually scanning environments, Delta Scan makes use of drones to capture 3D data so that a business can more easily perform infrastructure inspections. The data is captured in minutes rather than weeks and is so precise it could spot an ant on a building according to Epstein.

“This was a fantastic event. There was lots of energy and variety in the pitches seeking to solve different types of problems. It was very interesting to see how Africans are solving problems,” said Sawyer Tadano, South-East Regional Manager for Pegasus Tech Ventures, organisers of the Start-Up World Cup.

Other pitches made at the AfricaIgnite competition included education solutions, mobile money apps. job recruitment and a beauty app. The judges congratulated all the competitors noting that while it pitching their business to a room full of strangers is no easy feat. With that having been said, being able to put African businesses on a global stage is incredibly valuable.

We wish Delta Scan the best of luck at the competition in the US next month and congratulations to all eight startups that participated in the AfricaIgnite Pitch Competition this week.

[Image – Josh Sorenson on Unsplash]