Israel Active

Facebook Israel will be hiring 40 new employees - 30 for its R&D center and 10 for marketing. It is Facebook’s first recruitment drive since purchasing acquired Israeli startup Onavo in late 2013 and turning it into its Israeli R&D center.

Jonathan Wall, e-commerce director at UK’s Shop Direct, is in Israel to meet 15 Israeli startups, and hopes to find technology solutions to help increase his annual £1.7 billion sales of 50 million products to five million customers. (I featured Shop Direct’s link with Israel’s last year.)

Israel’s Salt of the Earth has reported significant sales growth in the Russian salt market in 2014. The company also expects to double salt exports to Russia in 2015. Salt of the Earth supplies high-quality sea salt to tuna and salmon processing plants in Russia’s Vladivostok and Korsakov regions.

Israel’s PlayBuzz has raised $16 million to expand its quiz games, lists and poll website internationally. Founded by Shaul Omert (son of an ex-Israeli PM) Playbuzz has grown to more than 80 million unique users, with more than half of its traffic coming from Facebook.

Israeli startup FundBox lends money to small businesses who are struggling with their cash flow. After uploading a company’s invoices and checking for fraud, Fundbox pays the company now, instead of it having to wait 60 or 90 days for the purchaser’s money.

Israel’s financial ecosystem took off in 1993 thanks to the venture capital firm Yozma and its founder Yigal Erlich, Chief Scientist of Israel’s Ministry of Industry and Trade with a US$100 million Government investment. Yozma is now expanding into Asia.

Israel’s Gilat Satellite Networks has won a $286 million contract for telecommunications infrastructure in Peru. Gilat will connect the remote rural regions of Huancavelica, Ayacucho and Apurimac, including about 600 public institutions, to broadband services.

Israel's Fattal Hotels Ltd. is opening its first UK hotel. The company has leased the Holiday Inn Heathrow Airport in London for 25 years and it will open on March 16 as part of Fattal's Leonardo hotel chain. Fattal is in talks to open more hotels in the UK.

The Vancouver Israeli Tech Club (ITC) is connecting British Columbia’s technology sector to its Israeli counterpart. Over 200 entrepreneurs, business leaders, researchers, trade officers, investors and officials from Israel and B.C. attended an ITC conference at Simon Fraser University.

I reported about Israel’s Lingua.ly in 2013 when it launched its desktop software that provides students with suitable Internet articles in the language they are studying. Lingua.ly launched its Android smartphone app in April and has now raised $1 million of funding.