Nasscom, Accenture head to Israel to code hardware odyssey

BENGALURU: The Nasscom Product Council and IT consulting major Accenture plan to collaborate with Israel Innovation Authority to help startups from both countries in joint product development, knowledge transfer and in the creation of hardware ecosystem.

Somdutta Singh, Nasscom Product Council's co-chair, and Avnish Sabharwal, MD, Accenture Ventures and Open Innovation, Accenture India, plan to take the delegation of product council leaders and the startups to Israel in the first week of September.

"We are working with startups in Israel and the collaboration between the two countries will benefit the world at large with new hardware innovation. This will also overcome the cultural challenges in workspaces in both the countries," he said.

Nasscom's move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel in July where he had promi sed collaboration in technology, defence and security along with bilateral cooperation in entrepreneurship and cybersecurity.

Sabharwal said the collaboration will happen around artificial intelligence, machine learning, block chain, cybersecurity and in the areas of healthcare, pharmacy and agriculture among other industries.

He hopes to make the Israel-India corridor as strong as the Silicon Valley-India corridor and bring Israelbased accelerators to India. "Every year, around 40 delegations go to Silicon Valley from India. We want that kind of traffic between Israel and India. We shall figure out MoUs with the Israel Innovation Authority and other bodies there."

"We still have a long way to go until we reach the level of Ireland or Israel and moreover, hardware startup accelerators are needed to fuel this growth," Singh said.