Winners of India-Israel Innovation Challenge Declared
The India-Israel Innovation Challenge announced the winners of the grand challenge today, recognizing the top 18 teams in the areas of agriculture, water technology and digital health. The teams had submitted innovative solutions to address critical social issues in these sectors and will now be supported in taking their ideas to the next level.
The India – Israel Innovation Bridge was launched by the Prime Ministers of India and Israel on 6 July 2017. The bridge has taken the shape of a tech platform that facilitates bilateral co-operation between Indian and Israeli Startups, tech hubs, corporations and other key innovation ecosystem players. The platform is host to the innovation challenge, calling upon Israeli and Indian startups to combine forces to develop solutions for critical problems in the field of agriculture, water and digital health.
Within each of these areas, two specific problems statements were identified. The agriculture challenges focused on reducing post-harvest loss, improving market linkages, enhancing agricultural productivity, and increasing farmers’ earnings. The issues identified in the area of water technology revolved around wastewater treatment, desalination, recycling or purifying large water sources, and producing potable drinking water at point of use. Digital Health invited solutions to health management for NCDs (Non-Communicable Diseases) and low-cost diagnostics in rural areas. The challenge was hosted on the Startup India Hub, a one-stop shop web platform developed by Invest India for the startup ecosystem of India.
The call for applications (Indian side) remained open between 10 September – 12 November 2017. The challenge received an overwhelming response in the form of over 660 applications from Indian innovators and startups for the challenge. The list of Indian startups and innovators who have been selected as winners of the Indo-Israel innovation Challenge are Amvicube and RF Wave Technologies in the Agriculture category; Innotech Intervention and Pure Paani in the water technology category, and I Love 9 Months Fitness Solutions and Bioscan Research in the digital health category.
The winners of the challenge will receive a cash prize of Rs 5 lakhs and the runners up will receive a cash prize of Rs 2 lakhs. The winners will also work on the proof of concept for their solution with the support of Corporate and Investor partners, and selected incubators from India and Israel.iCreate and T-Hub are the anchor incubation partners and will be offering a 6-month program to the top teams. In addition to the above, the winners would also get to participate in a first-of-its-kind market access program, ‘the Co-Creation Summit’ that will bring together stakeholders from both startup ecosystems to facilitate collaborations. The summit will provide both Indian and Israeli innovators access to a range of Indian field experts, representatives from corporate partners, Government officials, and other partners. Along with meetings and focused mentorship sessions, startups will be taken added for field visits to provide a more hands on experience.
The India-Israel Innovation Challenge is jointly managed by DIPP (Ministry of Commerce and Industry), and the Israel Innovation Authority.
