Business Guide | Israel-India 2022

COVID- 19 Co-Efforts In times of global pandemic, Israel acted to meet Indian COVID- 19 challenges with Israeli technology solutions. In 2021 an Israeli delivery of medical equipment was flown as aid to India, in light of the severe coronavirus crisis the country was facing. During the pandemic, Israeli scientists have been collecting samplesfromover 20 , 000 Indianpatients, inthehopeofusing the data to create rapid testingmethods. Collaborations are not just beneficial to the business communities, but newpartnerships in our shared humanitarian and scientific efforts could have global impact. To boost domestic manufacturing, Government has launched production linked incentive schemes for medical devices, bio-pharmaceuticals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, repurposed drugs and more. The Government has also approved the setting up of four MedTech industrial parks that are coming up inHimachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, MadhyaPradesh andUttar Pradesh. The intention is to create a solid ecosystem for medical device manufacturing. Today, India is home to over 4 , 000 health-tech start-ups, mainly active in areas such as telemedicine, digital medicine, andpersonalizeddevices, as the Indian innovative medical sector has a good confluence with a strong IT sector – thus creating a truly rich ecosystem. Other leading trends are 3 Dprinting, AI (artificial intelligence), and smart sensors. Herearises thequestion: wherecana globalmedical pioneer suchas Israel fit in? For quite a few Israeli medical start-ups, India seems to provide a largely unexplored market - with a 1 . 28 billion strongpopulation, increase in lifestyle-related diseases and the rising spending capacity of themiddle class. As of today, Israel and Indiaarealready med-tech business mates: Israeli exports of optical, photo, technical andmedical apparatus to India came to USD 111 . 77 Mn during 2020 . At the same year, pharmaceutical products imported fromIsrael to Indiaamounted to USD 8 . 28 Mn. However, India is a price-sensitive market and only a third of the Indian population is medically insured. To solve this, the Indian government recently rolled out an ambitious healthcare plan to expand the base of insured families in India to over 100 million. This could provide comfortablefinancial terms for Israeli healthcare companies in telemedicine, teleradiology and diagnostics. Israeli Imports from India In the other direction, Israel imports from India pharmaceutical products valuedatUSD 25 . 69 Mn.Pharmaceutical and medical equipment product exports from Israel in 2020 reached $ 8 . 28 Mn during 2020 , consisting mainly of medical products such as blood, antisera and vaccines. Indian origin venture capital funds are no strangers to Israeli innovative companies and such investments have already beenmade. But can this sum be increased?Media reports indicate it probably will, and soon. NIIF, a new national private equity fund, is now running investments worth USD 4 . 5 Bn in various areas – healthcare and telemedicine being among them. 77