Mumbai, Maharashtra, India | 17th March 2022: Leading technologists, investors and CXOs, at the 1st India Israel Deep Tech Summit echoed the significance of Deep Tech in optimising technology to drive innovation among Indian businesses. The maiden edition was organised by Israeli Deep Tech SaaS consultant Onnivation, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Embassy of Israel in India.
The two-day Summit from March 10-11 saw participation from over 30 speakers and more than 2000 delegates. Dignitaries like Professor K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Salil Singhal, Chairman Emeritus, PI Industries and H.E. Naor Gilon, Ambassador of Israel to India, were a part of the inaugural session along with Saket Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Onnivation Ventures aka #yourisraelguy, at the event.
Professor K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India said, “The new capabilities of the Indian health sector will allow startups, health organisations, bigger industries, hospital chains and individuals to be consultants at the high-end, globally. The horizontals of technology that go across sectors combined with the verticals of deep expertise will allow the scaling of Deep Tech.”
H. E. Naor Gilon, Ambassador of Israel to India said, “There is a lot of similarity between the Indians and the Israelis in terms of culture and I think that it’s a very natural combination for us to work together. Israel has great tech capabilities and India has a huge market. So I think that by all standards India is better at building big businesses.”
Marking 30 years of the India-Israel relationship, the event included eight roundtables in areas like Agritech, Fintech, D2C brands, Acquihire, Modern Data Apps, Web 3.0 and more. In addition, the three masterclass sessions held by leading Israeli experts highlighted how companies are moving beyond traditional analytics to leverage Cloud, Data engineering, Cyber Security, Testing, Observability, Martech, Fintech and Gaming.
Saket Agarwal, Founder and CEO, Onnivation Ventures said, “The ties between India and Israel are a match made in heaven. India stands to gain tremendously by leveraging Israel’s strong expertise in solving issues around Cloud, Data and Security. This gives our engineers a chance to focus on doing what they do best – innovate and solve for scale, and in the process offer a great customer experience.”
Indian startups raised USD 47 bn in funding last year, out of which USD 15 bn is expected be spent on tech. The roundtables at the session discussed the benefits of Deep Tech and SaaS in addressing concern areas in the tech industry like the talent crunch, high cost of operations and lack of Big Data solutions.
Leaders at the event included Yashish Dahiya of Policybazaar, Jeyandran Venugopal of Flipkart, Krish Subramanian of Chargebee, Anand Prabhudesai of Turtlemint, Shruti Kashyap of Hindustan Unilever, Ramneek Khurana of Lenskart, and Balaya Moharana of DeHaat among others. Prominent tech leaders from Israel included Amiram Shachar of Spot by NetApp, Oded Zehavi of Mesh Payments, Asaf Ezra and Udi Tizan of Granulate.
Prominent VCs included, Judah Taub of Hetz Ventures, Ravinder Pal Singh of Kalaari Capital, Roy Gottlieb, of Cardumen Capital, Uriel Peled of Revault Network, Eran Bielksi of Entrée Capital and Tal Yatsiv of Pico Venture Partners.
The speakers at the roundtables discussed the innovation ecosystem in Agritech, the importance of vision alignment between investors and companies and the conundrum of ‘Build vs Buy’, faced by startups.
During the panel on Fintech, leading experts explained how they are providing individuals with unprecedented tools for managing money and risk in addition to sharing the best go-to-market strategies for the US.
The event also hosted panels on how machine learning and automation can precisely meet application needs to optimize cloud costs and the possibilities that Web 3.0 can create for tech companies.
With the increasing demand-supply gap for tech talent, the event also featured a discussion on acquihiring as an effective talent acquisition strategy to help companies scale their tech capabilities.
