India and Israel, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the country, launched a bilateral innovation challenge for startups in both the countries, called the India Israel Innovation Bridge.
The Israel Innovation Authority along with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) will be managing the online platform together to facilitate bilateral cooperation between startups, tech hubs, corporations and other key innovation ecosystem players. The initiative aims to host an innovation challenge for Israeli and Indian startups to combine forces and develop solutions for some of the world’s most critical challenges.
The Innovation bridge, launched by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, aims at leveraging Israel’s strengths in technology with Indian market access to bring together both of the startup ecosystems. The challenge will be hosted on an online platform and will provide comprehensive guides and toolkits to help startups explore expansion opportunities.
A joint panel of judges will select entrepreneurs from India and Israel, as a part of the challenge to give an opportunity to further develop their solutions through a unique program managed by Invest India and Israel Innovation Authority. The selected startups will have access to cross border mentorship, incubation and acceleration prizes and the opportunity to interact with end users, investors, corporations and other potential partners in both the countries. iCreate from Ahmedabad and T-Hub from Hyderabad along with Pears Program for Global Innovation (Israel,) have already committed to be the incubation partners for the program.
Along with the opportunity to participate in an exclusive co creation summit in India with industry leaders, experts and potential partners, the participating startups will also get a $ 7, 820 (Rs. 4.6 Lakhs) cash prize. The applications for the online challenge is now open and will close on November 10, 2017. The annual challenge will be conducted in three areas, namely health, agriculture and water.