Israel Centre at IIMB
Overview
India and Israel have had a long and fruitful history of bilateral development cooperation, especially since 1992 when formal diplomatic relations were established. With the new emphasis of the Indian government on promotion of entrepreneurial activity, business and academic contacts between the two countries assumed heightened significance. The recent visit of the Prime Minister of India to Israel emphasized the prominence of the relationship and heightened public awareness, particularly in Israel.
Traditionally, economic partnerships between India and Israel have been in the defence and aerospace sectors. There are immense opportunities in extending the scope of partnership to other domains. These include agrifood-tech, digital health, fin tech, Industry 4.0, mobile and telecom, and water and energy.
India-Israel economic relationships are based on a fundamental complementarity. Israel offers a vibrant technology-based innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. India seeks to gain from this because of its strong aspirational entrepreneurial spirit. India offers a large market with innovative opportunities for penetration. Israel seeks to gain from this because of its strong aspiration for market scale up.
Given the nature of complementarity, the essence of the India-Israel business relationship will be boosted by a deeper appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the two sides, and the judicious and contextually intelligent structuring of collaboration.
With such an increase in business collaboration between India and Israel, some areas of opportunity, which need deeper academic and managerial involvement, are emerging. These include understanding of technology innovation, business strategy and history, government policies and culture. This provides the scope for collaborations amongst academic institutions between the two countries.
During the Israeli President's visit to India in November 2016, more than 20 agreements were signed between the heads of Israeli and Indian universities aimed at increasing academic cooperation, student and faculty exchanges, and research partnerships.
Advisory Board
Ajay is a seasoned global executive with more than 35 years of multi-country, cross-functional experience.
He started his career with the Tata Group and joined 3M in India in 1988 as its first employee. He was responsible for forming the JV and building the organization from scratch. In the subsequent 28 years with 3M, he held positions of increasing responsibility in different parts of the world. In 1993 he relocated to Singapore to manage the APAC region for the telecom business. He moved to the divisional headquarters in Austin, Texas in 1998 where he led the launch of a major new services diversification initiative for the corporation as well as integration of a large French/German acquisition. He spent the subsequent four years at the corporate headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota in senior strategy and new business development roles including identifying and leading the acquisition & integration of a new-to-the-company technology venture.
In 2005 he moved to Israel as Managing Director of 3M Israel. He returned to India in 2008 as the first Indian MD of 3M’s only public company outside the US. During this five-year stint the company’s revenues doubled, market cap quadrupled, a major R&D center was set up and local manufacturing ramped up. He is currently Chairman of Syndicate Bank and on the Board of Alicon Ltd. Additionally, he is an active innovation evangelist on various forums, mentors start-ups/SMEs and is an angel investor. He is the Co-chair of the CII Directors Guild on Corporate Governance, a member of the CII Start up Council, on the Advisory Board of International Institute of Information Technology (IIITB) and on the Advisory Board of Israel Centre at IIMB. Ajay holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech., USA.
Avnish Sabharwal is Managing Director, Accenture Ventures and Open Innovation, India.
He has 25 years of achievement and performance around developing, growing and turning around businesses for Top 500 Fortune clients in both mature and emerging markets.
He currently serves as an elected member of the NASSCOM Product Council. Avnish is also part of the Big Data and AI Steering Committee for India headed by the Ministry of IT and Telecom, Government of India. His functional experience includes: New Venture Creation, M&A and JVs, Business and Corporate Strategy, Digital Transformation, Ecosystem Architect, and Open Innovation. His industry experience covers Automotive, Defence, and Hi-Tech.
Prior to joining Accenture, Avnish worked with IBM’s Global Business Services in India and the United Kingdom for almost a decade in various leadership roles. He was responsible for providing market insights to help design growth strategies, and build financial models and investment cases needed to accelerate IBM’s growth in high-growth segments like smarter planet, digital and emerging markets. Avnish was instrumental in building both the IBM's offshore strategy consulting practice as well as the captive knowledge process offshoring and building an Analytics Centre of Excellence in India.
Avnish was part of IBM’s leadership team for the automotive industry in Europe for five years –responsible for consulting and selling sales, marketing and after-market solutions to automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and large auto suppliers.
Avnish is one of the most sought after speakers on the Indian start-up ecosystem and a regular blogger on Linkedin.
Nivruti Rai is Vice President in the Data Center Group (DCG) and Country Head of Intel India at Intel Corporation. Based in Bengaluru, she provides overall engineering and business unit leadership and leads operations for the site, driving innovation, cross-group efficiencies and execution for engineering teams delivering global products and roadmaps. She also leads engagements with national and local governments and policymakers, as well as collaboration with ecosystem players to enable innovation and entrepreneurship.
Nivruti is also responsible for DCG India site engineering and execution, with a focus on delivering platforms aligned with the India team’s charter. In addition, she supports DCG and the Intel Sales and Marketing Group in strengthening customer, ecosystem, academic and research lab relationships in India.
She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Physics and Chemistry and a Master’s Degree in Applied Mathematics, both from the University of Lucknow in India. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from Oregon State University and a Board of Director Certification from Harvard Business School. She has been issued one U.S. patent and has authored several technical papers on integrated circuit design methodologies and operations research.
Message from the Chairperson
Professor Jaideep Sarkar,
Chairperson, Israel Centre
India and Israel are both start-up nations with young populations, brimming with talent, energy and innovation. While continuing to strengthen ongoing cooperation in traditional sectors such as agriculture, water and defence, the challenge in the years ahead is to create mechanisms and platforms that would incubate cooperation in frontier areas of technology such as EnvironmentTech, Lifesciences, Robotics and AI. Both countries are global leaders in the area of digitalisation, whether of society, economy or governance.
Bangalore is at the heart of India’s advanced IT and services economy. The Israel Centre at IIM, Bangalore seeks to collaborate with universities, corporates, think tanks and public entities to study and develop initiatives and projects that would contribute to building the next generation India – Israel partnership that truly reflects the enormous capabilities of both countries and their common aspiration for a strong multi-faceted relationship.
Professor Jaideep Sarkar,
Chairperson, Israel Centre
IIM Bangalore
Israel-centric Work at IIMB
IIMB has years of ongoing academic programmes, research collaborations and student exchange programmes with leading Israeli academic institutions and, especially, with Tel Aviv University (TAU), in the last four years
Faculty at IIMB have been involved in Israel-related research. Scholars from Israel have visited IIMB for research seminars and conferences
IIMB has an exchange relationship with Coller School of Management at TAU that has participation from the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) students
The Coller School also has an International Exchange Week which has participation from the Post Graduate Programme in Enterprise Management (PGPEM) students
Technion is part of the Global Network for Advanced Management (GNAM) which allows IIMB and Technion students to take courses, during specific weeks, in the network's schools
Israel-centric teaching at IIMB, particularly the course 'Developing Technology Partnerships between Indian and Israeli Firms', is jointly taught by faculty from Coller School and IIMB, and involves live projects that require students to spend time in Israel
Role of Israel Centre at IIMB
Currently, there are only nascent initiatives in India among academic institutes, and particularly none in management institutes to create, share and disseminate knowledge in the relevant areas of Indo-Israeli business with an objective to create an informed cadre of managers, entrepreneurs and scholars.
IIMB is ideally positioned to start an Israel Centre, as it has ongoing academic collaborations and student exchange programmes with Israeli institutes of higher learning. Focused activities of the Israel Centre at IIMB will be aimed at stimulating, strengthening and sustaining Indo-Israeli academic-business interactions. Israel and the state of Karnataka, particularly Bangalore, are hubs for creativity and innovation, havens for start-up ecosystems and research. This centre, dedicated to Israel on the premises of IIMB, will help fulfil the talent and potential of both the sides to the fullest.
Mission of Israel Centre at IIMB
To act as a hub for research on Indo-Israeli interactions in the fields of technology innovation, business strategy and history, government policies and culture, by uniting scholars, business community and students
To help Israeli/ Indian business communities integrate with Indian/Israeli business environment
Objectives
To become a knowledge centre of Israeli technology innovations, business strategy and history, and culture
To nurture ongoing relationships with centres of Indian studies in higher education institutions in Israel
Public service (making available the results of academic research/teaching on the Centre's focus areas to the public and private sector of India and Israel through various initiatives)
Proposed Activities
- Enhance the course, Developing Technology Partnerships between Indian and Israeli Firms
- Support exchange programmes between Israel and IIMB
- Create specific Executive Education courses for Indian and Israeli management personnel, including on management of innovation
- Host international seminars, workshops and conferences on Israel-India centric business themes, and government and foreign policies
- Develop research and case studies of Indo-Israeli projects and businesses
- Nurture the entrepreneurial spirit by creating training programmes for stakeholders of the start-up ecosystem:
- in Bangalore and India for technology-based innovation
- in Israel for market scale up
Past Events
IIMB hosts a talk by Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat on Feb 19
The Israel Centre at IIM Bangalore will host a talk by Mr. Ishamel Khaldi, Israeli diplomat currently in Bangalore. The talk is titled, ‘Israeli Minorities: Insights of a Bedouin Diplomat’.
The session is an opportunity for those interested to know about Israel to listen to him and also interact to learn his views on the experience of minorities in a Jewish state.
Mr. Ishmael Khaldi was born and raised in the Bedouin village of Khawalid in the Western Galilee of Israel. He earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Haifa, and a Master’s Degree in International Relations from Tel Aviv University. He served in the Israeli Defense Forces, Defense Ministry, and the Israeli Police before being chosen to join the Foreign Ministry in October 2004, becoming Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat. He initially served in the Arabic Media Department acting as the spokesperson to the Arabic media during the disengagement from Gaza. He was then transferred to the North American Division until being selected for Deputy Consul General in San Francisco, where he was stationed between 2006 and 2009. In August 2009, Mr. Ishmael Khaldi was appointed to be policy advisor to Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman. In 2010, he published his autobiography, A Shepherd’s Journey: the story of Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat.
The session is scheduled during 12.00 – 13.00 hrs on February 19, 2018 at Room C 13.