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Business Opportunities Food & Beverage Latest News Israel News Top Stories

Israeli ChickP Develops Cream & Cheddar Cheeses With Traditional Fermentation Methods

Contact us for the Australian supplier of ChickP

Israeli food tech company ChickP announces it has successfully developed cream and firm cheddar cheeses with its chickpea protein isolate using traditional cheese fermentation methods.

The company claims its prototypes match real dairy cheese in appearance and flavor, demonstrating its protein isolate is an exceptional plant-based protein alternative for cheese analogs.

ChickP commercially produces a non-GMO, allergen-free, patented chickpea protein isolate for multiple applications. The company develops formulations using its product to assist manufacturers in creating customized plant-based products. Its portfolio includes egg-free mayonnaise, chickpea-based barista coffee creamer, and an ice cream formulation replicating dairy’s full sensory experience.

Winning cheese analogs

“ChickP’s breakthrough formulations will be instrumental in helping manufacturers fast-track customization of plant-based cheese products that genuinely respond to consumer’s cravings for a delicious cheesy experience,” states the food tech company.

The cream and firm cheddar cheese formulations combine simple ingredients like water, coconut oil, starch, and chickpea protein isolate, fermented with lactic acid bacteria (like traditional cheese) for a “tangy cheese-like flavor” and with probiotic benefits. 

“We insisted on applying only traditional processes for our winning cheese analogs,” explains Maor Dahan, application manager for ChickP. 

Clean label formulas

Furthermore, the company’s chickpea isolate embodies a 90% whole protein composition providing a powerful and nutritional boost. It’s clean-label, with a neutral flavor, making it a highly versatile ingredient and an “exceptional” plant-based protein alternative for cheese analogs.

“Our formulas contain no stabilizers or gums. We explored a range of cultures to find the strains that work best with our formula. On top of that, the synergy between the chickpea isolates and starch helped create a rich, smooth, creamy textured spread on par with real dairy cream cheese and awards hearty complete protein fulfillment,” Dahan added.

A market for flexitarians

ChickP is currently collaborating with alternative dairy producers and traditional dairy manufacturers, equipping them with their raw materials, recipes, and technical support to create analogs of popular cheeses such as emmental, parmesan, and mozzarella. 

“Flexitarians dominate the consumer market for dairy alternatives,” says Liat Lachish Levy, CEO of ChickP.  “They are eager to eat vegan alternatives as long as those alternatives can level up to real dairy’s sensory and nutritional attributes. These are precisely the gaps the industry is striving to close. While some cheese analog producers succeed on the sensory points, this often comes at the expense of the desired nutritional balance—and vice versa.”

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Business Opportunities House and Family Products Latest News Israel Medical and Healthcare IT News Top Stories

AI Learning Buddy Helps Dyslexic Kids Read and Understand

And yes, iterations are already available for sale in AU via the following:

https://shop.visionaustralia.org/orcam-myeye-pro.html

https://www.spectronics.com.au/product/orcam-read

OrCam is already one of Israel’s startup successes, with a device that literally helps the blind to “see”.

It reads text to the user – anything from a newspaper to a cereal packet. It also recognizes people, identifies objects, and helps the user find their way around.

The Jerusalem-based company was established by Prof. Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram, founders of Mobileye, the driver assistance system that Intel bought in 2017 for $15.3 billion.

OrCam launched MyEye for blind and visually impaired people in 2015 and has now refined its technology to help children with dyslexia, ADHD and other special educational needs.

The new OrCam device offers the same “point and read” function, but it goes much further. The pupil can read to the device and it will score their performance, provide feedback, and help them with difficult words.

It will also ask them comprehension questions to see how well they’ve understood the text they’ve just read, and it will provide teachers or parents with a detailed analysis, so they can adapt their teaching methods.

All this AI technology, plus a sophisticated camera, is packed into an easy-to-use device about the size of a highlighter pen. Pupils who have used it in trials find it “fun and engaging,” according to one teacher.

“It levels the playing field for a dyslexic child,” said Michelle Catterson, executive head at Moon Hall School, in Reigate, near London.

“So in areas where they will find things difficult, the assistive technology is what helps them to access the learning.” They see it as a learning companion. One child described it as their “learning buddy”.

In the USA alone, an estimated 10 million K12 children (kindergarten to 12th grade) struggle with reading, mostly because of dyslexia.

“We want them to gain independence – and confidence – in reading ,” says Meny Gantz, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Kids who are challenged by reading can become frustrated and less communicative.

“OrCam Technologies got its start by assisting people with vision difficulties. Now we are supporting students with challenges in learning. Our mission is to help people achieve their maximum potential.”

There are other “reading pens” available, but they scan a word, or at most a sentence at a time, which is frustrating and time-consuming.

The OrCam Learn reads a whole printed page in one go, or a computer screen, or text in any font on any surface, even in low light. It can even read handwriting, if it’s neat enough.

“The device also is capable of listening to the student read to the device, and it gives feedback in real time. It might tell them, for example, that they read 80 out of 90 words correctly, well done,” says Gantz.

“It can also ask questions about what they read, so it’s actually checking their comprehension. The device’s artificial intelligence chip includes natural language processing algorithms.

“Also, while the student is reading we can get process information about their reading and actually analyze it to identify areas where the student needs improvement.”

Here’s an example of the OrCam providing feedback in a demonstration: “Great reading, you’ve read 28 out of 35 words correctly, you may want to practice reading two syllable words. Africa is one of seven tough words you’ve read correctly. Very fluent reading.

“Now it’s time for some questions. Please point at any word in the sentence that contains the answer to the following questions. Here is the first question, what is the fastest land animal on earth?”

The student can point at a difficult word and the device will read to them again, and again if necessary. The student can also connect to earbuds if they don’t want to disturb others.

The OrCam Learn uses advanced NLP (natural language processing) and NLU (natural language understanding) algorithms to process previously unseen texts and ask the student questions about them to check they’ve understood.

It immediately generates evaluation reports for every reading session, in the format already used by schools, measuring the difficulty of the text relative to the student’s grade level, fluency (words correct per minute), accuracy (number of words read correctly out of total words) and overall reading time.

The OrCam Learn has been used in pilot projects so far at a school and a college for students with dyslexia or reading and learning difficulties in the UK, and at a number of public schools in Wisconsin, USA.

The vast majority of pupils – 84 percent at one UK school – said it helped them understand the text better. The 10 to 13-year-olds also preferred reading with it to reading without it.

It can be switched to “exam mode”, disabling functions beyond point-and-read, so that students can use it during external exams. And future refinements will include a dictionary and a translation feature.

The device was launched commercially a few months ago. Parents can sign up for a two-year deal, paying a monthly subscription for the device, and OrCam also plans to provide it through schools.

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Business Opportunities IT & Communication

Dataloop AI | AI-Assisted Data Management and Annotation Tools

Dataloop’s data management and annotation platform streamlines the process of preparing visual data for machine and deep learning. Dataloop’s platform is a one-stop shop for generating datasets from raw visual data. It includes a data management environment, an intuitive annotation tool with automatic annotation capabilities, and data quality assurance and debugging tools. The company’s vision is to make deep-learning-based computer-vision solutions accessible and affordable to all.

Dataloop AI: The Data Engine for AI

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Business Opportunities IT & Communication

Run.AI | AI Optimisation and Orchestration

https://www.run.ai/

Run:AI is bridging the gap between data science and computing infrastructure by creating a high-performance compute virtualization layer for deep learning, speeding the training of neural network models and enabling the development of large AI models. By abstracting workloads from underlying infrastructure, Run:AI creates a shared pool of resources that can be dynamically provisioned for full utilization of expensive GPU compute. The Run:AI platform is built on top of Kubernetes, allowing simple integration with leading open-source frameworks. Run:AI was named a cool vendor in Cool Vendors in Enterprise AI Operationalization and Engineering, 2021 by the Gartner Research Group.

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Business Opportunities Film Industry Latest News Israel News Top Stories

AI Creates Digital Twins for a New Age of Internet by YOOM (formerly TetaVi)

Say hello to your digital twin. Deep tech experts in Israel can capture a highly realistic 3D image of you using multiple cameras and AI.

They then bring your twin to life either doing things they’ve actually filmed you doing – playing guitar, taking a golf swing, jumping out of a plane – or things you haven’t.

Your digital twin can be programmed to mimic the actions of a library full of stuff that other people have done while you sit at home and enjoy a coffee.

Yoom, founded in Tel Aviv, is one of the go-to companies for what’s called volumetric video capture – creating a 3D image with endless opportunities.

The internet is taking another leap into the future with “immersive experiences”. That means we won’t just see a character in two dimensions. As we watch a performer sing, for example, we’ll move the mouse on our device to swing from left to right, zoom in or out, go low or high, and make the experience unique and personal.

Volumetric video capture is the technology that makes this possible. Yoom have been working on it since 2016 and say the AI that powers their system is among the best, because it has learned from thousands of captures, and has been tweaked and refined over the years.

It’s an expensive and complicated process, so the main clients currently are sports stars, entertainers, games developers and retailers.

As the “real” and virtual worlds become more and more blended – that’s what the Metaverse and Web3 are all about – the demand for immersive and interactive content will grow exponentially. Consumers will come to expect a 3D experience, rather something that’s flat and 2D.

“We allow people to create without any physical boundaries,” says Bonnka Lim, Chief Marketing Officer at Yoom.

“We work with a Canadian artist called Riell. She had a creative vision about doing a music video about her childhood and the struggles she had.

“But she didn’t have the resources to actually do a shoot in Europe and other places with the team. So we captured her in the studio and created the whole world that she had in her mind.

“We produced a music video clip tied to the vision that she had as a creator. Our technology lowers the barriers of content creation, ultimately, because once we have your 3D model, we can create any environment you want.”

Riell was filmed using a set of eight cameras, and her movements were processed by Yoom’s highly sophisticated neural networks – a series of algorithms that mimic the workings of the human brain to perfect the rendering, texture and lighting.

The images they captured resulted in her digital twin on an apocalyptic city street and a blazing house for her single End It – in scenes that would have otherwise been impossible to create on a budget.

“I didn’t know anything about volumetric capture before this,” she said. “I did not know this existed, nor did I understand the first like three times it was explained to me.

“I’m really amazed that it’s a camera with an algorithm that creates a 3D version of you. It took me a bit to wrap my head around that. It recreates you, which I think is sick!”

The Yoom team also captured Dustin Brown to mark his retirement from the LA Kings ice hockey team in the USA after almost two decades.

His digital twin appeared on a huge billboard, opposite the team’s stadium, appearing to smash through a window and hold aloft the Stanley Cup, the National Hockey League’s championship trophy. That was the result of capturing his volumetric image in the studio, then enhancing it and adding effects.

Paul Oakenfold, the godfather of electronic music and legendary British record producer and trance DJ, is another of Yoom’s celebrated volumetric captures. He appears in a PerfectoVerse, a 72-minute paid-for concert film and immersive experience that combines his lyrics and music with computer-generated visual wizardry.

“He came to the studio and we captured him, and created a whole experience where people can actually see him performing, they can be around him and interact with the content. If you click, there are sparks and other effects,” says Lim.

The capture process can require as little as 30 minutes of actual filming, though there’s a lot of technical work that takes place afterwards.

Lim, who was at Warner Bros for 12 years, joined Yoom because he believes the technology it has developed represents the future of content creation and production.

“The magic is that once we have your digital twin we can then put you in any type of digital environment: we can put you in a game, and we can put you in an AR (augmented reality) experience.

“If you look at the history of content on the internet, we started with text, then we moved to image, and then we moved to video. But videos are a very passive experience. The only interaction you have with video is play, pause, skip forward, go back, share. And that’s it.

“I believe that the future is content that is more interactive, so your experience will be different from mine. And this is possible because of the technology we have developed. Because you interact with it, you’re more immersed into the content which means that you’re more engaged.”

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Business Opportunities Cosmetics & Toiletries Latest News Israel News Top Stories

Everyone needs a good dose of Vitamin Sea! – Spotlight on the Israeli Dead Sea Cosmetics Industry

Dubbed ‘the largest free spa on earth’ the Dead Sea is a rich Salt Lake that is amongst the favorite tourist destinations centuries over, due to the healing properties of the minerals found in it. A geological wonder of more than 400 meters below sea level bordered by Jordan to the east and the West Bank and Israel to the west, it is considered the lowest point on the earth’s surface.

The Israeli cosmetics industry has a burst of products that are composed of minerals, salts, and mud from the Dead Sea. These products boost skin health by reducing skin impurities, soothing chronic back pain, treating acne, as well as treat various health conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis just to name a few.

According to Raju, K (2022) the global market size for Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics was valued at $723.00 million in 2021 and is projected to reach $2.6 billion by 2031, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 13.5% from 2022 to 2031.

Israel is a global leader when it comes to the production of Dead Sea products. In this blog post, we are delighted to share some of the top Israeli Dead Sea Companies:

  1. AHAVA – Located on the shores of the Dead Sea, its mission is to offer the virtues of the Dead Sea using its most extraordinary ingredients and creating innovative and effective products. AHAVA’s main point of difference is Osmoter™, the mineral catalyst at work in every AHAVA formula. AHAVA’s Osmoter™ draws moisture and nutrients from the depths of the skin to its outer layers, where it is needed the most.
  • Mediline – “Natural Sea Beauty” was first founded 20 years ago by L’Oréal. In July 2010 it was acquired by Mediline. Mediline is a privately owned company that imports, promote, and exports pharmaceuticals, Dermo-Cosmetics, and para-medical products in Israel. “Natural Sea Beauty” products contain mineral Complex Solution, an exclusive formula that combines natural ingredients from the Dead Sea with innovative technology to provide the skin with essential minerals for a healthy, youthful, and radiant look.
  • Daor Cosmetics – Daor Cosmetics is part of the Biscol Group. Established in 1938, Biscol Ltd. is a 100% family-owned concern and one of Israel’s most enduring and prestigious privately held companies. Their P.L. cosmetics and Toiletries activities are mainly conducted through Biscol Cosmetics Ltd., one of Israel’s leading relevant manufacturers. Their Dead Sea activity is done through Daor Cosmetics Ltd which serves as a marketing branch for their “house” Dead Sea-based brands.
  • Mersea Dead Sea – specializes in the export and distribution of beauty and skin care products carefully developed by combining the rejuvenating minerals of the Dead Sea and its region with aromatic oils and plant extracts. The products they export and distribute are of the highest quality, made only from choice natural ingredients. They have a vast and rich collection of cosmetic products from the Dead Sea (over 170 products) and still growing.
  • Sea of spa labs Ltd – was founded more than 18 years ago in Arad, Israel. The company is known for the uncompromising quality of its products and is considered a breakthrough leader in terms of innovation and up-to-date marketing approach. Over the years, the company has undergone radical changes concerning the expansion of business operations. The company’s products are originally from the Dead Sea and they contain vitamins and essential oils at a concentration higher than usual to feed and perfect care of the skin.
  • H&B Health and Beauty Ltd – was established in 2006 by Hadara Ben Bassat. H&B Dead Sea cosmetics are based on the minerals from the Dead Sea, highly enriched with vitamins and essential, natural oils, an incredible combination of high-quality active ingredients which are set to achieve the ultimate goal of healthy and glowing skin. The products are developed out of the notion that everyone should benefit from nature’s mysterious wonder called DEAD SEA, highly enriched with minerals such as Bromide, Magnesium, Potassium, and more. Currently, H&B’s products (more than 200) are exported to more than 70 countries all over the globe. The cosmetics are sold at department stores, pharmacies, drug stores, SPA, specialty stores, perfumeries, Duty-Free, travel retail, etc.
  • Alona Shechter Ltd – established in 1994. The company has developed an in-depth knowledge of the cosmetics industry and has a fine reputation in this
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Business Opportunities Latest News Israel News Top Stories Transportation & Logistic

Growth Spurts in Smart Mobility & the Future of Smart Transportation 

Disruptive innovation across various industries sees a change in the global corporate landscape and Israel is home to one of the world’s largest innovation technology hubs. It has lately seen enormous growth, particularly in the transport, logistics, and mobility sector. As such, the global transport industry is disrupted by trends in new Mobility, Autonomous Driving, Digitalization, and Electromobility. 

Start-ups are seizing the opportunity to develop novel solutions for the future of mobility furthermore; they are addressing the trend that new mobility provides for innovative mobility solutions for passengers and goods, most notably in the area of shared mobility and micro-mobility, as well as in fleet management solutions. Autonomous driving-related start-ups have shown the strongest growth among the four categories and digitalization-related start-ups make up the largest share of mobility start-ups. Start-ups focusing on the development of electromobility (such as EVs, batteries, charging facilities, and electric motors) experienced moderate growth in recent years.

The insurgence in the industry is fueled by a convergence between the growing need to solve urban transportation problems and the emergence of new technologies and radical business models. Smart mobility offers to deliver valuable services across entire transportation networks thus, aiding urban congestion, difficulties in providing additional transport infrastructure, and inflexible and regulated public transit agencies. Overall, the way individuals travel from one place to another is fundamentally changing.

Below is a list of some companies that offer smart mobility solutions:

  1. Otonomo – fuels a data ecosystem of OEMs, fleets, and more than 100 service providers spanning the transportation, mobility, and automotive industries. The company’s platform securely ingests more than 4 billion data points per day globally from over 50 million vehicles licensed on the platform along with massive amounts of mobility demand data from multimodal sources. It then reshapes and enriches the data to accelerate the time to market for new services designed to improve the mobility and transportation experience. Otonomo provides deeper visibility and actionable insights to empower strategic data-driven decisions, thereby taking the guesswork out of mobility and transportation planning, deployment, and operations. 
  • Uveye – develops automated vehicle inspection systems powered by artificial intelligence and proprietary hardware. The company’s unified inspection-as-a-service deep-learning platform provides an objective, scalable, and efficient standard practice for identifying issues in vehicles as they progress through the automotive lifecycle. UVeyes anomaly detection and alerting solutions offer support throughout the mobility industry, from the in-line inspection or paint shop on-site at the OEM manufacturer to the aftermarket with insurance providers, fleet managers, rental agencies, dealerships, and more. 
  • Autobrains – provides perception products for advanced driver assistance and fully autonomous driving systems, with dramatically superior performance and lower compute requirements vs. market standard. The precise perception and sensing platform enable the car to fully comprehend its environment and recognize a wide array of fine-grained concepts, including pedestrians, vehicles, and behavioral states. 
  • Via – uses new technologies to power public mobility systems and optimize networks of dynamic shuttles, buses, wheelchair-accessible vehicles, school buses, and autonomous vehicles around the globe. The company’s platform uses algorithms to adapt ride-sharing routes to passenger needs. Via’s technology enables minibusses or other large shared taxis to collect passengers from prearranged stops and to adjust routes in real-time according to passenger demand, traffic congestion, and other factors. Via licenses its technology to cities, transportation authorities, school districts, universities, and private organizations to help them build their own technology-driven transportation networks. The company operates in partnership with over 400 local governments across more than 20 countries worldwide.
  • Aquarius Engines – develops, manufactures, and distributes linear internal combustion engines, based on the company’s proprietary two-sided free piston linear engine, which can also be integrated into generators for off-grid electricity or boosting electric powertrains. With only one moving part, the Aquarius engine is compact and lightweight, allowing for reduced manufacturing and maintenance costs. The Aquarius generator is developed and built to meet robust requirements for availability, reliability, redundancy, remote control, and cost efficiency.
  • Greenroad Technologies  – a fleet management solution provider differentiated by its focus on driver safety for commercial fleets. Used by more than 120,000 drivers in hundreds of fleets worldwide, the company’s products deliver a rapid return on investment based on a reduction of incidents, fuel consumption, carbon emissions, and maintenance and insurance expenses. GreenRoad’s solutions provide real-time driver coaching and alerts for more than 150 risky driving maneuvers of varying severity along with predictive driver and vehicle analytics. The company’s mobile app-based platform is now used by thousands of mobile workforce, oil, and gas industry drivers across the globe. The availability of this digital solution makes it easy for customers to include contractors and temporary workers as well as employees, including those who drive motorcycles, within the Safe Driving program and to roll out the solution across global organizations.
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Business Opportunities IT & Communication Security & Safety

TDCOMM | Next-Gen Software for Simplifying Network Operations

TDCOMM specializes in private LTE and 5G networks for OEMs, system integrators and large organisations. Their software-only or complete turnkey wireless network solutions are capable of rapid deployment in harsh environments, to ensure the continued performance of your wireless operations in critical facilities and across the virtual space.

Dedicated to supporting existing IT, security and operations teams, TDCOMM provide customers with an advanced yet intuitive management platform, providing deep network insights and policy enforcement functions. Their products include enterprise networks, MEC (Mobile Edge Computing) platforms and rapid deployable networks for emergency services, tactical comms and backup coverage.

TDCOMM’s customer base is largely within Industry 4.0, Government, IoT, First Responder and Critical Infrastructure domains.

For all enquiries, email Luke at the Israel Trade Commission.

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Business Opportunities News Top Stories

A look at the Israel Tech Ecosystem in 2022

Famously known as the ‘Startup Nation’, the Israeli tech and startup community is one of the fastest-growing ecosystems in the world. With its advanced technologies, state-of-the-art R&D centers, and increasing government support, a lot happened within the Israeli tech scene in 2022.

While funding for tech across the globe in 2022 had significantly reduced (by approximately 35 per cent), Israel was hit harder, with a funding decrease of 40 per cent. In 2021, Israel had raised close to $29 billion, whereas 2022 saw a dip – with Israeli startups managing to raise around $17 billion. One of the reasons for this dip was poor public market performance, caused by high inflation rates in 2022.

Despite this fall in capital raised, Israel managed to maintain its position as the fifth-largest tech ecosystem in 2022. Above Israel were the USA ($235 billion), China ($64 billion), the UK ($28 billion), and India ($23 billion). Cyber Security continued to lead Israel in raising capital, followed by IT, FinTech, Healthcare, and RetailTech.

Additionally, 21 new unicorns (with a valuation of $1 billion or above) were added in 2022, expanding the list to a total of 85 unicorns in Israel as of January 2023. Moreover, the M&A market of Israel continued to be extremely active last year; a total of 109 M&A deals were closed in 2022 with a total value of $18 billion. Some of the notable M&As are Unity & ironSource, Tower Semiconductor & Intel, Granulate & Intel and Zimperium & Liberty. This is largely possible because of the growing interest of multinational corporations like Intel, Google and Apple in Israeli tech and their confidence in the opportunities for scalability offered by them.

Some of the top most innovative Israeli startups from 2022 include:

Reep Technologies: Reep offers the world’s first practical, industrial-strength system for circular printing. Reep’s solution sets a new standard in sustainability for office printing, while also meeting the requirements for leading enterprises and organizations. Reep technologies aim to increase document safety and save operations costs through circular printing.

6Degrees: 6Degrees is an Israeli startup that has developed a hands-free adaptive controller for people who are unable to use their hands. The company has created a technology that can easily translate movements into a command on any smart device- including computers, tablets and smartphones. With every single move, the technology learns and adapts to the user’s unique motions and adjusts as per their needs.

Pigmentum: Pigmentum offers a sustainable and highly scalable solution for the low-cost production of high-value natural compounds for industries such as food and nutrition, health, diagnostics, and research. Pigmentum is developing a patent-protected molecular technology platform that can turn indoor or outdoor-grown crops into efficient producers of high-value compounds at a fraction of the cost incurred by the current fermentation-based industrial production plants.

Green Kinoko: Green Kinoko has developed an elegant outdoor cooling air conditioner based on smart patented cooling technology. Their product ‘Kenshō’ is the first outdoor air conditioner that doesn’t need an electrical connection. Kenshō brings the green revolution to outdoor cooling and has already brought great demand for long term collaborations.

Written by Priyanka Nangalia, Trade Officer at the Israel Trade and Economic Mission in Mumbai – Priyanka.Nangalia@israeltrade.gov.il.

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Business Opportunities IT & Communication New-Media & Gaming Retail Tech & eCommerce SME

vcita | Business Management App for Small Businesses

vcita in a nutshell, helps SMB owners around the world manage the fundamentals of their day-to-day business – money, time, marketing and clients. They build strategic partnerships with their clients worldwide to empower their SMB customer base with value-added services, increase their client engagement and create new growth opportunities.

In the Australian market, vcita is looking to connect with both digital marketing agencies looking to broaden their service offering, and telco companies interested in diversifying their retail products.

For all enquiries, email Luke at the Israel Trade Commission.