Reliance Industries to invest $25 Million in Israeli Startup Incubator

By Shariq Hussain

Posted on July 21, 2017

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) plans to invest $25 Million in an Israel based technology incubator named Jerusalem Innovation Incubator(JII), which will be focusing on startups that are working in the field of new age technologies like computer vision, IoT, artificial intelligence and fintech etc.

RIL will invest along with Israeli equity crowd funding platform OurCrowd and Motorola Solutions. RIL will hold 20 percent, OurCrowd will own 60 percent and Motorola Solutions will hold 20 percent stakes respectively. Whereas Yissum, a non-investing partner, will provide research and development and other support.

JII will be setup at OurCrowd’s headquarters in JVP Media Quarter campus, Jerusalem. The incubator is licensed by the IIA, which falls under the purview of Israel’s Ministry of Economy.

According to an official statement issued by RIL on the development, “The proposed investment in JII would help pool significant amount of capital which is essential to fund the cutting-edge innovation required by early-stage startups in partnership with Israel Innovation Authority (IIA). This will also give [startups] early access to innovation, technologies and products from one of the world’s largest startup and technology innovation ecosystems.”

JII will mainly invest in early-stage startups in the field of big data, analytics, artificial intelligence, fintech, storage, Internet of Things, and computer vision over a licensed period of eight years.

This might be the aftermath of Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting Israel a week ago and signing a 5-year tech funding deal. Reliance Industries’ investment will also be in tranches till the license period of 8 years. Saying that this incubator will invest in the startups every year up to 8 years.

Israel has emerged the hub of start-ups, producing more of these companies than Japan, China, India, Korea, and the United Kingdom. In India, Reliance Industries has entered the start-up ecosystem by providing a platform called the GenNext Hub which helps entrepreneurs set up companies and build scale. Read more about Indian Startup Ecosystem. 

Reliance Industries to invest $25 Million in Israeli Startup Incubator