Indian-Israeli Start-ups as Partners is a Match Made in Heaven Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to India has made way for multiple collaborations

Countries across the world have been hopping on the start-up bandwagon, but one country that defies its small size with the massive number of start-up success stories coming out of it is Israel. Over the years, Israel has grown to be one of the leading start-up ecosystems in the world. With innovation in abundance and the number of IPOs only rising with each passing year, the country has received global attention.

India, with its own strong start-up ecosystem has partnered with Israel for the Indo-Israel Innovation corridor that allows start-ups from both countries to collaborate and build a business together. Earlier, Indian PM Narendra Modi's visit to Israel saw the launch of India Israel Innovation Bridge - a bilateral innovation challenge for start-ups.

Now, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to India also saw the launch of The India Israel Business Innovation Forum which will further help entrepreneurs and investors build business opportunities with their counterparts in Israel.

All of this marks the beginning of a bridge between the two countries that will allow access to investors and entrepreneurs to make use of each other's technologies as well as markets to scale their business.

Israel's Booming Start-up Ecosystem

There's no fooling when it comes to Israel's start-up ecosystem. Constantly innovating, the country sees over a thousand start-ups added every year with some of the best accelerators and incubators housed in its start-up capital Tel Aviv.

In 2017, Israeli start-ups raised over $5 billion in funding, according to report by IVC Research Centre. But that's not it, when it comes to innovation the country ranks second globally and saw over $17 billion worth exits in 2017.

The country is gung-ho about fast scaling its innovation programs by partnering with countries across the world. And here is where India comes into the picture.

India - The Perfect Market for Israel

Israel is known to come up with fantastic innovative technologies which it further outsources or sells to billion-dollar companies based out of the US. These global companies then use this technology to further improve their operations.

India, is now Israel's new best friend (We aren't just talking about PM Netanyahu's first name reference to our dear PM Modi). But with multiple partnership, the most overwhelming one being a trilateral fund for US, India and Israel worth $50 Mn which was launched by Israel-India Technology Group.

But what makes India, a desired market for Israelis? Israel has the technology and India, has the problems. In India, global start-ups have the opportunity to solve the "one billion problem".

In an earlier interview with Entrepreneur India, Jason Wang, the recently-appointed Managing Director of content-sharing app SHAREit said that he believes India is not a good market to make quick & easy money. But if a company wants to make build something great and worthwhile, India is the only option in the world. He added that his company is looking to answer the one question every global company aims to answer - How to solve the problem of a billion people?

How Indian Start-ups Will Benefit

There is no doubt that India and Israel's partnership, to cultivate a better start-up ecosystem in both the countries, will prove beneficial to Indian start-ups. The Indian start-ups will have the opportunity to partner with Israeli ones for technological solutions. The Israeli software industry also boasts of a wide range of companies in IT security, data centre and internet solutions along with a rising number of AI-based companies. Indian start-ups or companies can make use of a partnership with the same to create a robust software protection system for themselves.

Agritech is another point of collaboration for the countries. With India's vast agricultural lands that are also ridden with challenges, Israel's technological agricultural expertise makes for the perfect partnership. Israel has over 400 companies offering AgriTech solutions. Indian start-ups that have a know-how of the market and local challenges can adopt these technologies to solve problems.