Indices of first occurrences

Use np.argmax along that axis (zeroth axis for columns here) on the mask of non-zeros to get the indices of first matches (True values) -

(arr!=0).argmax(axis=0)

Extending to cover generic axis specifier and for cases where no non-zeros are found along that axis for an element, we would have an implementation like so -

def first_nonzero(arr, axis, invalid_val=-1):
    mask = arr!=0
    return np.where(mask.any(axis=axis), mask.argmax(axis=axis), invalid_val)

Note that since argmax() on all False values returns 0, so if the invalid_val needed is 0, we would have the final output directly with mask.argmax(axis=axis).

Sample runs -

In [296]: arr    # Different from given sample for variety
Out[296]: 
array([[1, 0, 0],
       [1, 1, 0],
       [0, 1, 0],
       [0, 0, 0]])

In [297]: first_nonzero(arr, axis=0, invalid_val=-1)
Out[297]: array([ 0,  1, -1])

In [298]: first_nonzero(arr, axis=1, invalid_val=-1)
Out[298]: array([ 0,  0,  1, -1])

Extending to cover all comparison operations

To find the first zeros, simply use arr==0 as mask for use in the function. For first ones equal to a certain value val, use arr == val and so on for all cases of comparisons possible here.

Indices of last occurrences

To find the last ones matching a certain comparison criteria, we need to flip along that axis and use the same idea of using argmax and then compensate for the flipping by offsetting from the axis length, as shown below -

def last_nonzero(arr, axis, invalid_val=-1):
    mask = arr!=0
    val = arr.shape[axis] - np.flip(mask, axis=axis).argmax(axis=axis) - 1
    return np.where(mask.any(axis=axis), val, invalid_val)

Sample runs -

In [320]: arr
Out[320]: 
array([[1, 0, 0],
       [1, 1, 0],
       [0, 1, 0],
       [0, 0, 0]])

In [321]: last_nonzero(arr, axis=0, invalid_val=-1)
Out[321]: array([ 1,  2, -1])

In [322]: last_nonzero(arr, axis=1, invalid_val=-1)
Out[322]: array([ 0,  1,  1, -1])

Again, all cases of comparisons possible here are covered by using the corresponding comparator to get mask and then using within the listed function.

It is reasonably fast to use np.where:

>>> a
array([[0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1],
       [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]])
>>> np.where(a>0)
(array([0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5]), array([3, 4, 5, 6, 3, 4, 5, 6, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6]))

That delivers tuples with to coordinates of the values greater than 0.

You can also use np.where to test each sub array:

def first_true1(a):
    """ return a dict of row: index with value in row > 0 """
    di={}
    for i in range(len(a)):
        idx=np.where(a[i]>0)
        try:
            di[i]=idx[0][0]
        except IndexError:
            di[i]=None    

    return di       

Prints:

{0: 3, 1: 3, 2: 4, 3: 6, 4: 6, 5: 6, 6: None}

ie, row 0: index 3>0; row 4: index 4>0; row 6: no index greater than 0

As you suspect, argmax may be faster:

def first_true2():
    di={}
    for i in range(len(a)):
        idx=np.argmax(a[i])
        if idx>0:
            di[i]=idx
        else:
            di[i]=None    

    return di       
    # same dict is returned...

If you can deal with the logic of not having a None for rows of all naughts, this is faster still:

def first_true3():
    di={}
    for i, j in zip(*np.where(a>0)):
        if i in di:
            continue
        else:
            di[i]=j

    return di      

And here is a version that uses axis in argmax (as suggested in your comments):

def first_true4():
    di={}
    for i, ele in enumerate(np.argmax(a,axis=1)):
        if ele==0 and a[i][0]==0:
            di[i]=None
        else:
            di[i]=ele

    return di          

For speed comparisons (on your example array), I get this:

            rate/sec usec/pass first_true1 first_true2 first_true3 first_true4
first_true1   23,818    41.986          --      -34.5%      -63.1%      -70.0%
first_true2   36,377    27.490       52.7%          --      -43.6%      -54.1%
first_true3   64,528    15.497      170.9%       77.4%          --      -18.6%
first_true4   79,287    12.612      232.9%      118.0%       22.9%          --

If I scale that to a 2000 X 2000 np array, here is what I get:

            rate/sec  usec/pass first_true3 first_true1 first_true2 first_true4
first_true3        3 354380.107          --       -0.3%      -74.7%      -87.8%
first_true1        3 353327.084        0.3%          --      -74.6%      -87.7%
first_true2       11  89754.200      294.8%      293.7%          --      -51.7%
first_true4       23  43306.494      718.3%      715.9%      107.3%          --

Use next with enumerate:

>>> myList = [0.0 , 0.0, 0.0, 2.0, 2.0]
>>> next((i for i, x in enumerate(myList) if x), None) # x!= 0 for strict match
3