In their bestseller, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer raise and try to answer a question: How is it that Israel — a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources — produces more start-ups than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?

There are many factors to the success story of Israel as a start-up hub — a mandatory military service; the necessity of self-reliance as there are no friendly neighbours; the lack of natural resources as which has led to innovation; its immigrant and the diaspora population which is among the richest in the world, among many others.

In comparison to India, Israel is way ahead of it. Even the flagship programme of the Narendra Modi government to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, Startup India, has not brought much difference to the scene.

As the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Israel on July 4, India can certainly learn a bit or two from Israel to speed up the start-up industry in the country.

Here is how the Israeli start-up industry fares in numbers

# In 2016, Israeli start-ups made $9.2 billion in exits.

# At least 150 Israeli companies are listed on NASDAQ, which is third largest next to China and the US.

# There are about 350 R&D centres of innovative tech companies like HP, Microsoft, Google and Facebook present in Israel.

# Currently more than 6,000 start-ups are active in this middle-east country.

# Close to 1,300 new start-ups are founded every year.

# The start-ups in the country received venture funding worth $4.8 billion in 2016.

# The Israeli government has a $500 million fund to support the start-ups companies. The country tops the charts for both country and business sector expenditure on R&D (as per cent of GDP).

# SOSA (South of Salame) — an ecosystem in Tel Aviv which brings together start-ups, investors, and MNCs all under one roof to nurture and scale up innovation— constitutes more than 2,500 start-ups, 150 partners, 45 investors.

# Out of the current population of eight million, 40,000 people work in the high-tech industry and contribute to 15 per cent to the exports of the country.

# Israel tops the chart for the density of start-up ventures per capita and is 2nd only to Silicon Valley in the total number of start-ups.

Source: Money Control