Israel’s Start-Up Nation Central and India’s International Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (iCreate) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) last week for a bilateral program to advance innovation and technology cooperation between startups and corporates from both countries.
The purpose of the program is to bring together Israeli and Indian entrepreneurs and startups to collaborate on innovative projects, the organizations said.
The program will begin by defining a set of challenges that will then be shortlisted to the most relevant solutions and technology providers. This will be followed by a matchmaking mechanism developed by leveraging both countries’ networks to support the process of adaptation and piloting these solutions in India.
The MOU was signed by Eugene Kandel, CEO of Start-Up Nation Central from Jerusalem, and Anupam Jalote, CEO of iCreate from Ahmedabad. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific advisor to the government of India, was present through videoconferencing, while Ron Malka, Israel’s ambassador to India, and Yaakov Finkelstein, Israel’s consul general in Mumbai, were physically present.
Others who were present virtually were Sanjeev Kumar Singla, India’s ambassador to Israel. Shri Vijay Rupani, chief minister of Gujarat, sent his best wishes through a video message.
iCreate was established in 2012 to create a high-tech startup ecosystem with the active support of Narendra Modi, who was previously the chief minister of Gujarat. It brought in leading industrialists and academicians as mentors and has been working with Israeli universities and accelerators since it was founded. The new campus of iCreate was inaugurated by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Modi in January 2018.
Start-Up Nation Central is an independent nonprofit organization that builds bridges to Israeli innovation. Start-Up Nation Central connects business, government, and NGO leaders from around the world to Israeli innovation.
Israel and India have developed a strategic partnership in recent years. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two countries have collaborated on a number of joint ventures such as rapid COVID-19 testing solutions and the integration of Israeli medical equipment and technologies in Indian hospitals.
“This MOU is an important step in realizing the potential of the India-Israel relations in the field of innovative technologies,” said Kandel.
“Today we close a circle. A circle that started in 2018 when PM Modi and PM Netanyahu inaugurated this important incubator, iCreate. And now, two years later, we are signing, on the very spot where they stood, an MOU on innovation between Israel’s Start-Up Nation Central and India’s iCreate. This agreement is an important milestone in the growing innovation collaboration between Israel and India and stands in line with the visions of the prime ministers,” said Malka.
This article first appeared in NoCamels, which covers innovations from Israel for a global audience.