Israel's Top VC Fund Loves Indian Entrepreneurs & Sees Great Potential in Technology Investing in the Country OurCrowd is an equity crowd funding platform built for accredited investors to provide venture capital funding for early-stage startups
By Aashika Jain
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
While speaking to Entrepreneur India at the sidelines of the OurCrowd Global Investor Summit, Jon Medved, the CEO & Founder of OurCrowd venture capital fund based out of Israel said that the fund is not only interested in India but will mark its presence in less than 9 months.
"We don't have an office in India as of now, we love your country. India is our favorite country and we love your technology, engineer and your entrepreneur," Medved said.
OurCrowd is an equity crowd funding platform built for accredited investors to provide venture capital funding for early-stage startups. In India, it has invested in mobility startup ZoomCar & one of its portfolio companies Zebra Medical Vision announced its foray in India in partnership with India's top hospital chain Apollo Hospitals.
Medved said the fund's interest lies in mobility, cyber security, technologies such as medicine, infrastructure security, digital health and how one can use machine learning, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and agriculture in India.
He thinks India is at the brink of an agriculture revolution and it is going to be awesome - it is going to be based on sensor driven data then managed by AI, Machine learning, algorithms to improve yields dramatically to make irrigation works to worry about post harvest spoilage and these healthcare in India we can do so much together with your talented engineers with your huge market opportunity we can change the world," He said.
The next question was asked about, "There are many Israeli companies as investors particularly to put investment in India, is OurCrowd helping any of them?" to this Medved said, "We are working with many Indian organizations and institutions but we are waiting to establish the team right. Now, we have opened so many offices in so many countries - the next step is in India and hopefully we will have more news to report by early next year, but right now we are trying to bring most of our companies to work with Indian partners.
He called ZoomCar an unbelievable company and if the company finds more companies like ZoomCar 'we are in,' said Medved.
Next Steps
"We are launching a med fund and a social impact fund, the fund is focused on having a positive impact on the society. The key challenges are there & we will be measuring the social impact. We have launched a sports tech fund, we have a cannabis fund which is looking at the medical aspects of cannabis, we have a AI fund we have a variety of fund there are 18 types of funds and 117 companies," he said.
The next question was asked about, "What you want to tell anybody who wants to raise funds via OurCrowd?" to this Medved said that," If you are thinking to start a company do it now, there is never been a time to raise money, there are so many elements in procession now whether it's Our Crowd of the fact on SaaS basis get started there are so many platforms in India.
His message to Indian entrepreneurs is - if you want to do something get started and do something now!