Your Email

Pasword

Location- Middle East 

Population- 9 million 

Major Religion- Jewish 

Prime Minister- Benjamin Netanyahu 

Capital- Jerusalem 

GDP- $348 billion 

Location- South Asia 

Population- 1.3 billion 

Major Religion- Hinduism 

Prime Minister- Narendra Modi 

Capital ? New Delhi 

GDP- $9.5 trillion 

India and Israel share a whole lot of history. Mahatma Gandhi supported the Jews for a prior claim for Israel. India voted against the Partitioning of Palestine plan of 1947. Moreover, India supported the creation of Israel on both moral and political grounds and admired Jewish nationalism and believed Palestine was the natural territory of the Jewish people, essential to their aspiration for nationhood.

 

India is the third-largest Asian trade partner of Israel and tenth-largest trade partner. Relations further expanded during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration, with India abstaining from voting against Israel in the United Nations in several resolutions. As of 2015, the two nations are negotiating an extensive bilateral free trade agreement, focusing on areas such as information technology, biotechnology, and agriculture. 

In July 2017, Narendra Modi became the first ever Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel. It was noted that Prime Minister Modi did not visit Palestine during the trip, breaking from convention. With the sole exception of Union Minister Rajnath Singh, previous trips by Indian ministers and President Mukherjee included visits to both Israel and Palestine. The Indian media described the move as the "de-hyphenation" of India's relations with the two states. 

This year on July 8th, 2017 - Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi, along with the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, launched a bilateral innovation challenge calling on Israeli and Indian startups to combine forces to develop solutions to some of the world?s most critical challenges in agriculture, water and digital health. The challenge will be hosted on the new India-Israel Innovation Bridge, an online platform to facilitate bilateral collaboration between Israeli and Indian startups, tech hubs, corporations and other key innovation ecosystem players. 

The initiative aims at leveraging Israel?s strengths in technology, with Indian market access to develop technology solutions for the world?s most critical challenges. As part of the challenge, a joint panel of judges will select entrepreneurs from India and Israel who will get the opportunity to further develop their solutions through a unique program managed by Invest India and Israel Innovation Authority,The selected startups from both countries will have the opportunity to interact with end users, investors, corporations and other potential partners in India and Israel. 

The Innovation Bridge will promote knowledge-exchange by providing comprehensive guides and toolkits to help startups explore expansion opportunities. 

India?Israel Innovation Bridge is a joint initiative of the Israel Innovation Authority and the I Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Govt. of India to bring together the startup ecosystems of India and Israel. I-Create (Ahmedabad, India), T-Hub (Hyderabad, India), Pears Program have already committed to the startups that will be chosen at the innovation challenge, to be joined by Israeli and Indian corporate partners. This clearly depicts both sides healthily exploiting the resources and talents in order to gain strengths in numerous fields. It has further anchored the trust and reliance on each other's hemispheres. 

Both the countries have mutual respect and are walking hand in hand into the future. There will be times when India and Israel will look back into history and witness the unbreakable bond between the two countries, they will be glad that they made it till this far.  

© www.newsandstory.com