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Despite its size, Israel provides valuable lessons in multiple fields for other countries to follow and learn.
Israel's total land area is just a little bigger than some of the districts in India and a population that is half of any major metro city of India. Encountered with several climate, geopolitical and geographical challenges, the country has made significant progress in creating an innovation and start-up ecosystem during the past few decades. According to Start-up Nation Central, in December 2019, there were more than 6,400 start-ups, over 350 venture capital funds and more than 300 corporate R&D centres. In the past decade, Israel saw 587 exit deals - defined as initial public offerings of shares, or merger and acquisitions of Israeli start-ups - for a total of $70 billion, according to data compiled by PwC Israel. This growth was largely driven by the acquisition of Mobileye (machine learning tech - for self-driving cars, computer vision, and other applications) by Intel for almost $15 billion, in August 2017. The Mobileye exit has been considered to be a great case-study and the success-story for the Israeli start-ups. Traditionally, the US has been the largest market for Israeli tech start-ups and companies. Presently, Israel has the third largest number of NASDAQ-listed organisations (trailing behind only to US and China). The country has witnessed constant growth and innovation taking place in a wide variety of sectors such as agriculture, cyber security, information technology, water management, defence, semiconductors, and others. This offers great learning examples for other countries to follow and learn. Several factors have been behind the success story of Israel as a start-up hub. The mandatory military service; the requirements of self-reliance due to the lack of friendly neighbours; scarcity of natural resources are some of them. The immigrant, as well as the diaspora population, is amongst the richest classes in the world - among the rest. Some of the key learnings which countries like India can take from the Israeli start-up ecosystem are as follows.
Several meetings of the European delegates have speakers who share their views and experiences regarding the need to think globally from the very first day, alongside emphasising the responsibility to the local community. In the area of Israeli tech, even the global companies have taken a step back to their roots. For instance, the office of Amazon Web Services headquarters, located at Tel Aviv has a floor available to conduct community events. On the other hand, Intel, who is the largest employer of Israel, has actively supported diversity programs at the workplace.