OurCrowd has invested in 100 companies since it was launched in 2013, of which 70 are in Israel, while the rest are spread across the United States, England, Australia and Canada. It made its first investment in India this year with car rental startup Zoomcar, and CEO Jon Medved told the platform is looking at 3 to 6 more investments in the country in 2017. OurCrowd opened its first office in Asia in Singapore a few weeks ago.
Medved, who is in India to get more Indian angel investors on board and also look for partnerships and investments in startups here, said OurCrowd has 270 Indian investors among nearly 16,000 global investors, and most of them are non-resident Indians (NRIs) including the likes of Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla. Indian crowdfunding platform LetsVenture is looking to explore a partnership with OurCrowd, the former’s founder Shanti Mohan told.
Pai who has invested in over 145 startups, including education technology platform Byju’s and Zoomcar, said Israel’s focus on deep-tech has been the main attraction for him to look at investments there. “Israel has a great set of universities doing deep-tech research. Their defense also spends on startups. Israel’s deep connection with the United states is also a plus,” said Pai, who invests individually and through his funds.
“For Israeli companies, India could be a market and our startups can collaborate with them. The startup ecosystems in India and Israel currently have a low level of interaction and we have to build that,” he added.
While Indian angels may not have been looking seriously at Israel, large companies such as Infosys ,and Tata have already made some investments in Israeli startups.
Infosys recently invested in Israel-based cloud computing startup Cloudyn, while Tata Group recently joined hands with global companies such as General Electric Ventures Ventures and others to set up a new technology incubator in Israel.
Source: The Economic Times
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