As part of the continuing policy of the government of Israel to work to improve the standard of living in the country’s Arab communities, the Israel Innovation Authority and the Authority for the Economic Development of Minority Sectors offered tenders to encourage entrepreneurship and tech careers in the Arab sector. As part of the selection process, three groups were chosen from among 24 candidates to run innovation centers focused on this core mission, two groups to run tech accelerators and one group to run an angel investors’ club for the Arab sector in Israel.
The successful applicants to run the innovation centers will receive an operating grant of up to 2 million ILS per annum (for each of the five years of the franchise), the accelerators will receive funding of up to 1 million ILS per annum and the angel investors’ club will receive funding of up to 900,000 ILS per annum (for each of the three years of the franchise).
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.
Welcoming the announcement, Dror Bin, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority said, “Even though the percentage is below the national average, in recent years we are seeing a positive trend of increased integration of the Arab sector in the tech industry. Among tech entrepreneurs, however, the number of Arab-led startups remains very low compared to the general population, despite the significant potential. The reasons for this are many and varied, including an absence of networking opportunities, physical distance from tech hubs, a lower threshold for risk-taking, a lack of access to mentors and investors, and to sum all of this up – the lack of a supportive local innovation ecosystem. The programs we have selected – innovation centers, accelerators and angel investors’ club – include representatives from the tech industry, academia and local partners with significant added value. We believe they have the ability to generate real change, give opportunities to young Arab men and women to realize their entrepreneurial potential and enable an expansion of the number of startup companies seeded in the Arab sector every year, as part of our commitment to supporting and diversifying the Israeli tech industry as a whole.”
Hassan Towafra, Director of the Authority for Economic Development of Arab Society said, “Government Resolution 550, the Takadum Program, aims to close the gaps between the Arab sector and broader Israeli society and help it realize its economic and social potential. The resolution places special emphasis on integrating Arabs in tech and encouraging tech entrepreneurship. The six successful proposals, some of which will be managed by Arab-run organizations, are extremely good news for Arab entrepreneurs, as they will soon provide a home for advancing innovative ideas. I am sure that by the end of the five-year period, we will see a significant increase in startups within Arab society, benefitting the Arab economy and society as a whole.”
The Successful Applicants for the Tech Innovation Centers:
1. The North-Med Innovation Center has been selected as an innovation center to be opened in the Sakhnin Valley. Among the partners: Portland Trust, MEDX Xelerator, Alpha Omega, Galilee Clinical Bio Research and five leading hospitals and medical centers in northern Israel (Ziv, Poriya, Bnei Zion, Galilee Medical Center and Nazareth Hospital).
The center will focus on life science technologies and will work to promote medical equipment ventures, digital health and artificial intelligence for the medical, food-tech and food supplement industries. The center will provide a holistic solution, with mentoring and professional support for tech ventures, working closely with the administrative echelons of the innovation-leading partner hospitals and clinicians. The center will also establish an employment center to create quality career prospects in tech and biotech for the Arab sector in northern Israel.
2. The Hasoub Labs Ltd. Center seeks to be a catalyst for the integration of entrepreneurial tools and practices and practical professional training for the Arab sector in Israel. The center is a partnership between Hasoub, the NPO supporting innovation and tech in the Arab sector, Appleseeds, MassChallenge Israel, Gamma Mu Holdings and Investments (Afifi Group) and Vintage Investment Partners, a global fund invested in the leading venture funds and start-ups in the world. The center will be set up in Ar’ara, in the heart of Israel’s so-called “Triangle” region, which includes six large Arab cities and 23 smaller villages and towns, with a total of 300,000 residents. The center will offer a multi-level entrepreneurship process that includes support from the very first stages of ideation all the way through professional and personal support from experienced mentors and advisors to develop the R&D and business and marketing aspects of the idea. It will also work to provide exposure among the investor community for the ventures and startups at the pre-acceleration and acceleration stages. Hasoub Labs will also provide advanced tech training to ensure graduates of the programs are able to integrate in the Israeli tech industry.
3. Kfar-Qasem Park-High-Tech Center Ltd. will be set up with the goal of integrating the Arab sector in entrepreneurship and Israeli tech employment. Specifically, it will work to advance medical and para-medical entrepreneurship in Kfar Qasem and other Arab local councils in the area. The center will be a partnership between the ARC Innovation Center at Sheba Medical Center – supported by the Triventures Fund, Basecamp, MindCET – Center for Educational Technology, the Tsofen NPO, the Talenteam Recruitment Agency, and the JTLV Fund. The center will work to advance tech education and to integrate the Arab sector into the Israeli tech industry, by developing tech-oriented human capital and establishing the proper infrastructure for workplaces to integrate the Arab sector in careers in the tech industry.
The Successful Applicant for the Angel Investors’ Club:
4. Hasoub Angels’ Club is a new angels’ club to be established by the Hasoub NPO with six senior figures from Israel’s venture capital tech scene (Yoram Yaacovi, Walid Afifi, Forsan Hussein, Guy Horowitz, Ron Moskowitz, Yahal Zilka) who bring a wealth of proven experience over decades of investment and support for hundreds of startups. The club will expose its members – Jewish and Arab angel investors – to investment opportunities in a diverse range of Arab-led tech ventures. The club seeks to generate a broad impact, a stable base of investors, including new investors from the Arab sector, and to determine a multi-year action plan to overcome the hurdle of obtaining pre-seed funding for ventures founded by members of the Arab sector. The club plans to carry out three investments in Arab-led companies in its first year, four in its second year, and six by its third year.
The Successful Applicants for the Tech Accelerators:
5. The Galilee Society’s ScienTech accelerator, which will operate within the NPO’s base in Shafa’arm, supporting entrepreneurs and setting up and accelerating ventures in the pre-seed and seed stages in the life sciences, bioconvergence, agritech, foodtech, circular economy and climate tech industries. The partners in this accelerator include the ARC Innovation Center at Sheba Medical Center, Mori Arkin Holdings, Agrobics, Antaki Center for Herbal Medicine, NGT and others. The accelerator will support academic entrepreneurs from the Arab sector in germinating technological innovations with preliminary research foundations through to the stage of forming a startup company and helping them to grow so they generate meaningful value for the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Arab sector.
6. The TAU accelerator will encourage Arab entrepreneurs to launch startups as part of a unique program that brings together Arab and Jewish entrepreneurs. The program is underpinned by the extensive experience of its founders in setting up and running two previous programs: StartOno and jumpTAU’ as well as the holistic support of the Tel Aviv University Entrepreneurship Center. Suitable graduates of the program will be offered the chance to fly to the United States for an entrepreneurship seminar run by the Merage Foundation. The program will be open to all members of the Arab sector and to graduates of all academic institutions in Israel.
