500 Startups, Ingressive checkout Lagos's most promising hardware tech

The geeks will be in Lagos for a week and there will loads of activities, networking, and ecosystem discussions going on. The tour kicked off with an official welcome event that had various local hardware startups exhibiting products ranging from 3D printing to solar and agritech at the IBM Innovation Lab in Victoria Island, Lagos.

After the welcome notes, TechCabal Co-founder Bankole Oluwafemi gave the first talk: “A Comprehensive Overview of the Nigerian Ecosystem.” Next was a panel that took on a deep-dive into technology, media, telecom and fintech featuring Tayo Oviosu of Paga, Lexi Novitske from Singularity Investments, and Bankole Oluwafemi of TechCabal as moderator.

ALSO READ: 500 Startups, Ingressive, Africa Tech Foundation have partnered on a tour for startups, investors

At the end of the panel session, it was time to network and see some amazing innovation at work. Apart from the IBM products on display (there were quite a few and very impressive), two companies that stuck out to me were Solstice Energy Solutions, a company with an end-to-end energy management device and app; and PS Nutrac, an agritech company with a technology that lets farmers grow crops without using soil (I know, incredible stuff).

Another company that got a lot of attention from the Geeks was Imisi 3D, a Virtual Reality (VR) development platform that had some interesting interactive VR demos for the geeks to play around with.

Investors, stakeholders and other tech industry players from within and outside Nigeria were present and the ambience was lovely. By 11am (not Nigerian time), the Geeks made their way out of the exhibition venue to the next event of their first day in Lagos: Taste of Naija.

Stay with Pulse Tech for everything you need to know about the Lagos leg of the Geeks On A Plane Africa Tour or follow live tweets from all the events using the following hashtags: #TechGuy, #GOAPAfricaTour, #GOAPLagosTour.

Hopefully we will get a chance to speak to Dave McClure, founding partner at 500 Startups. Stay tuned to find out!