Jonathan Tudor, technology and strategy director at Centrica Innovations, the corporate venturing unit of UK-based energy utility Centrica, laid out some of its insights in a prepared discussion with Global Corporate Venturing beforehand but the whole event uncovered how international investors are flocking to the Israeli ecosystem and finding ready partners among local corporations, VCs and startups.
It is a nice photo but for the imagery to really work it might have been more appropriate to have the sun rising.
As just about any sector you care to think of Israeli entrepreneurs seem to be active.
US bank Citi, for example, found 700 Israel-based startups dealing with different aspects of financial technology (fintech), covering payments solutions, business loans and credit, cybersecurity for payments and trading.
Citi’s accelerator, together with Israeli Discount bank, software company Intuit and payments provider Visa published a list of Israel’s most promising fintechs from a list supplied by 30 local venture capital funds, including Viola, Pitango, Team8, Entree Capital, and Qumra Capital, and selected several winners:
Rapyd Financial Networks in business-to-business payments;
Trigo Vision in commerce and payments;
Capitolis in trading and investing;
Chargeafter in lending and financing;
Lemonade in insurance;
Silverfort in cybersecurity;
BioCatch in anti-fraud;
Guesty in property;
WalkMe in customer engagement;
Unbound Tech in blockchain; and
Explorium as the most promising startup in the early-stage category.
From energy and mobility to finance and security, the most common discussion any investor will hear in the country will probably be along the lines of: “What are you interested in? I have the most perfect company for that and can introduce you if you would like.”
