A battery manufacturer, a lender serving small retailers, and a developer of underwater robots took the top three spots at TechCabal (TC) Battlefield during Moonshot in Lagos on October 29. Two of the three winners are building hardware in a country that relies heavily on imports for its technology products.
The annual competition brought ten startups before a panel of judges to pitch their businesses. Acecore won the $10,000 first prize, followed by Supplya, which received $5,000, and Navidyn, which took home $2,500. Supplya and Navidyn also earned places in Antler’s residency programme, giving them access to a potential $250,000 in pre-seed funding.
Acecore
Acecore started in Oyigbo, a town in Rivers State, where founder Caleb Iwuoha, an agricultural engineer with certificates in electrical and mechanical engineering, was assembling battery systems in a shed in 2024. He says monthly output has grown from 8kWh to more than 320kWh, and the company now runs a workshop and showroom. Iwuoha told the judges the casing and battery software were “all built here in Nigeria by our very own hands.”
The PowerCell is a battery backup that stores electricity from the grid or solar panels and powers a home or business when the grid goes down.
