From capital to people, a lot at stake for India Inc in Israel-Palestine conflict

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Israel in 1992, bilateral trade and economic relations have progressed rapidly – from $200 million in 1992, merchandise trade diversified and reached$ 10.1 billion (excluding defence) in FY 2022-23 with the balance of trade being in India’s favour.

While the most commonly known association between an Israeli company and India is that of the NSO Group’s spyware Pegasus, a number of Indian companies have exposure to the Israeli market. In 2013, the Tata Group invested $5 million in the Momentum Fund of Ramot, Technology Transfer Center at Tel Aviv University, and in 2016, they also set up a new technology incubator, called i3 Equity Partners (i3), which focuses on developing next-generation IoT technologies.

In July 2017, Reliance Industries Limited invested $25 million to set up Jerusalem Innovation Incubator (JII) in partnership with OurCrowd, an Israel-based leading start-up crowdfunding platform, for investing in early-stage startups over a period of eight years in the areas of big data, AI, IoT, fintech, storage and computer vision.

Hyderabad-based Anthill Ventures opened a startup accelerator in Tel Aviv and has partnered with Holon Institute of Technology to invest in Israeli startups to identify targeted technology categories and open markets for them in India and South East Asia.

Indian Oil Corporation Limited launched a joint venture with Israeli startup Phinergy in March 2021 to manufacture aluminium-air battery systems in India and promote green mobility through the development of fuel cells and indigenous hydrogen storage solutions.

In March 2022, Ola Electric invested US$ 5 million in an Israeli battery technology company StoreDot specialising in fast charging technology, as part of its plans to manufacture advanced chemistry cells in India.

Neolync, an Israeli company, has set up an Indian subsidiary and is currently manufacturing mobile phones in the country. Reliance owns a 40 per cent in its India arm.

Adani Ports share price rose over 7 per cent in Tuesday’s trade after the company said the overall contribution of Haifa in Adani Port’s numbers is relatively small at 3 per cent of the total cargo volume. Adani owns Haifa Port in Israel.

Apart from the capital exposure, there is another key concern – that of people. Tata Consultancy Services, which was the first Indian IT major to start its operations in Israel in 2005, has around 1,100 employees in the country. Wipro on Tuesday said it has 80 employees in Israel, all of whom are Israeli nationals and have been accounted for.

Wipro said it is “advising all employees in the country to work from home until further notice and follow the safety measures put in place by the local government. We are monitoring the situation closely and are ready to activate business continuity plans should there be a further escalation of events”.

Beyond the private sector, the two countries’ governments have also collaborated to fund businesses. In 2017, they set up the India-Israel Industrial R&D and Technological Innovation Fund (I4F) with a corpus of $ 40 million, over a five-year period, to support joint Industrial R&D projects between companies from India and Israel.