New Delhi: India will showcase its technology capabilities in Israel in May as relations between the two countries are getting redefined with enhanced cooperation based on innovation in high-tech, IT, biomed, energy and cyber security.
India will participate in the First Innovation Conference in Israel, MIXiii 2014, that will take place at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds May 20-22. The conference aims to introduce participants to the broad spectrum of activities and ecosystem that make Israel one of the largest global innovation hubs.
There is excellent cutting-edge technology to be found in Israel, government and company officials here say. The government has already registered at MIXiii 2014 and would take delegations from the country to showcase India’s capabilities.
“Israel is the epicentre of world innovation right now,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, last month in a speech that focussed on Israel as a hub for innovation as well as research and development.
“This is an invitation to an innovation nation, it’s open for business, it’s open for your business, please come join us,” he said, citing interesting examples of Israeli innovation — how scarce water resources has inspired Israelis to develop the world’s most advance technologies for re-using water, and how scarce agricultural land has inspired them to learn how to get more milk out of every cow.
Last May, Israel hosted a summit that highlighted the role innovation can play in helping Asian countries cope with critical demographic, social, technological and environmental problems. “Israel and India are existential partners,” Israel’s Ambassador to India Alon Ushpiz told IANS editors in a chat at the IANS office. “There are many joint values and joint interests on the basis of which the relationship can become a truly strategic one.
“The possibilities for cooperation are limitless.”
Since full diplomatic relations between Israel and India were established in 1992, the two countries have moved significantly closer, largely on the basis of growing sales by Israel’s defence industry to India. India is the largest customer of Israeli military equipment and Israel is the second largest military partner of India after Russia.
But technology collaborations in newer, diverse sectors such as water, solar, agriculture and biotech are quickening the strategic dialogue and interactions that have moved from relative obscurity to the centre of India’s foreign policy agenda. Officials from both sides say Israeli-Indian cooperation is now poised for dramatic boosts. In the past, the connections between Israel and India were made by American companies.
They come to Israel to buy some technology and then move the production to India. Now there is a realization on both sides that they should come together directly and not through third party.
India and Israel have set up a $40 million fund to leverage innovation for economic collaboration through jointly developed technologies or joint collaborations. The fund would help Israeli companies participate in large Indian government-led ventures, foster collaboration of Israeli and Indian companies in R&D projects and seek to adapt products developed in Israel for the Indian market.
Also spurring the two democracies are a growing consensus on security, emerging threats and expanding agenda of shared regional interests.
Earlier this month, 21 Israeli defence companies presented their cutting-edge solutions at the Defence Expo-2014 in New Delhi.
Both countries will work jointly to sharpen their expertise in the application of ground surveillance radar systems. Hyderabad-based Electronics Corporation of India and Israeli conglomerate Elbit Systems signed a letter of intent at the Defexpo. (IANS)