Israel Active

Israelis Yosi Romano and Ziv Leinwand went on the BBC’s “Dragon’s Den” program, winning a £125,000 investment from star “dragon” Touker Suleyman. Their device protects babies from pollution, sucking in air, cleaning it and blowing it into the child’s breathing space in its pram.

The Asian Games (Aug 18 – Sep 2) doesn’t allow Israeli athletes to compete, but the host country Indonesia has chosen Israel’s Moovit as the games’ official mobility app. Moovit is the world’s most downloaded transit app with over 200 million users in 82 countries.

As he opened trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) last week, Israel’s Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon revealed that the State of Israel would be worth NIS 17,638,763,277,054 if it floated on the TASE. This was according to the latest methodology used by the World Bank in a survey of 140 countries.

True to its promise, ratings agency Standard & Poor (S&P) raised its rating for Israel from A+ to AA-. S&P citing Israel’s steady economic growth and improved debt outlook.  AA- is Israel’s highest ever rating from any international rating agency and will save billions in interest repayments.

China’s Hainan airlines has just commenced its new direct service between Tel Aviv and the South China city of Guangzhou. Hainan already operates direct flights from Israel to both Beijing and Shanghai and is to add Shenzhen. Chinese tourism increased by 41% in 2017 compared to 2016.

United Airlines is marking its 20th year of service to Israel with the first ever nonstop flight between Washington Dulles International airport and Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. The three-times-a-week service commences on 22nd May 2019.

Due to open early in 2019, Eilat’s new Ilan and Assaf Ramon International airport is expected to service 2 million passengers annually.

British energy company Centrica has co-led a $12 million funding round for Israeli startup Driivz.  Driivz develops and sells cloud-based electric vehicle charging network management software.  Already over 200,000 drivers make use of the service.

Israeli equity crowdfunding company OurCrowd’s Labs/02 incubator has joined with Korean VC firms Development Trusts NI and Yozma Kore to help setup startups in both countries. Labs/02 focuses on technology startups in AI, deep learning, autonomous transportation and smart cities.

Funds raised by Israeli high-tech companies in the first half of the year soared to an all-time record of $3.2 billion - higher than the annual total capital raised in the full years between 2010 and 2013. The growth of investment from China and Europe was significant.