Nir Barkat, Israel’s minister for economy and industry, was in India, leading a large business delegation. In an interview to TOI, Barkat, a businessman turned politician, says he is optimistic about deepening business ties with India across sectors. Excerpts.
Why are Israeli companies looking at India now?
The opportunities have emerged now with the American President Donald Trump, and Israel and India can align interest and seek together how to scale up global business. We in Israel provide a lot of technology and India is a great partner in complementing, scaling and tailoring solutions to big problems. We view India not just as a local market but as a hub for regional and international expansion and we see the huge growth that India has for future and we are hedging on India.
Which are the sectors they are interested in?
There’s a lot of classic high-tech – business to business, business to consumer, health and life sciences. Israel excels in this. We have 2,000 companies in health life sciences, which is second in absolute number to the US. There’s a lot of interest in health and life sciences. We have agro tech, food tech, aqua tech – making food from the sea. We have lots of advanced industries to increase productivity of businesses. We have desert tech and climate change since 60% of our country is desert and we have homeland security, especially after this war to combat terror. We have mastered how to do it in an effective way and this is relevant for all countries that are friendly with Israel like India.
What has been the response of Indian companies?
When I was here in Dec, I was invited by minister Piyush Goyal. We brought the biggest ever business delegation that ever left Israel. Indian companies collaborated with each other and exchanged knowledge. Minister Goyal will organise a mission from India coming to Israel. It’s a fundamentally different approach and then we will know how to better pursue doing more business together.
How are you convincing Indian businesses about the security situation in the region?
On the contrary, I think it is the best time to do business because usually after a round of violence in a region, there’s a huge spike in business because there’s innovation. I was a combat officer in the first Lebanese war or the Intifada. You go back to war, you have time to think and you create more ideas that are very relevant not just for security, but for everything. You will see a huge amount of innovation in Israel seeking global interest. Because, we are so tiny, we are less than 10 million people. Our businesses seek international partners from the start. A lot of it is focussed on the US. Now, we are sharing that knowledge with Israeli entrepreneurs and telling them to look at India. The India of tomorrow is not like the India of yesterday. It’s a big giant moving ahead and we want to collaborate. We have no other alternative but to succeed and win in Israel because we are the only Jewish state. We have nowhere else to go. It is certainly safe. It’s an opportunity that I think Minister Goyal sees as much as I do. We see through those challenges and the opportunity is waiting for us to take it.
Israel has a huge requirement of manpower for reconstruction. Are you looking at sourcing manpower from India?
Not enough. We need more. We want both skilled and unskilled workers. I proposed to my govt to dramatically increase the number of people we bring to work in Israel. We have to work out the details and I have another meeting with the relevant minister today and we want more workers. Israelis love Indians. We love to see Indian employees in Israel. We need a lot of outsourcing too, which can be done to India.