Two Bermudian entrepreneurs were last night on cloud nine after their pioneering aerial photography business snapped up a top prize at an international competition in Greece.

Connor Burns and EJ Burrows were the first Bermuda entrants in the International Future Agro Challenge (FAC) at Industry Disruptors in Athens.

And their Bermuda Aerial Media and subsidiary firm Skymatics took the top prize and $7,000 in funding over a field of ten after impressing judges with their hi-tech drone helicopters and their potential for use in agriculture.

Speaking exclusively to The Royal Gazette, co-founder Connor Burns said: “We are pretty excited — we didn’t expect to win. We thought we would be a contender and big competitors in the field would win, but we ended up winning.”

Mr Burns — whose business partner Mr Burrows has been in Calgary, Canada, promoting the business to the agricultural, oil and gas, real estate construction and other industries — said a major bonus of the Athens event was the chance to meet heavyweight financial advisers and potential investors.

He added: “We are heading from here to Calgary to push the business a bit more over there.”

And he paid tribute to the Bermuda Economic Development Corporation and its business development officer Jamillah Lodge for encouraging them to put themselves forward for the event.

The Future Agro Challenge is a major event of the annual Global Entrepreneurship Week.

The pair qualified for the competition after winning the 2013 Bermuda Technology Innovation Award, presented by the Department of E-Commerce and run by the BEDC.

BEDC business development officer Jamillah Lodge said she had encouraged the firm to enter the Athens competition at a Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Moscow earlier this year.

She added: “Fast forward eight months and they have taken top honours against global competitors which is something that all Bermudians can be proud of.”

Ms Lodge said the firm’s “cutting edge technology in robotics, engineering and computer software and applying it in diverse ways to aid in agricultural land management to monitor large tracts of farmland for moisture and nutrient content and instantly conveying this information back to central control stations” had won the judges over.

She added: “Their win is the realisation of a personal goal that I have had since becoming involved with Global Entrepreneurship Week — to get our local entrepreneurs international exposure so that they can increase their opportunities for success.”

The firm was founded only last year after winning a licence to operate multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), known as drones, in Bermuda airspace.

The duo had to prove to civil aviation authorities that they had safe and comprehensive operating procedures and conduct flight tests to prove their ability to handle the small aircraft in emergency situations.

The Athens event attracted entrants from all over the world, including Germany, Bulgaria, Morocco, Algeria and Denmark.