Ahmedabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today inaugurated the International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Technology(iCREATE) facility located on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in Dev Dholera village in presence of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. iCreate is an independent Centre created with the objective of facilitating entrepreneurship through blending creativity, innovation, engineering, product design and leveraging emerging technologies to deal with major issues such as food security, water, connectivity, cybersecurity, IT and electronics, non-conventional energy, bio-medical equipment and devices etc.

During the visit, the leaders took a tour of the facility and visit various stalls that highlight technologies/innovations across fields. Following the tour, the leaders will award 6 category winners of the India Israel Innovation Challenge 2017 (https://www.startupindiahub.org.in/content/sih/en/innovation-challenge-results.html) – 2 challenges per sector (agriculture, healthcare and water). The leaders will then address the assembled gathering.

PM Netanyahu on the occasion is also slated to gift PM Modi the Gal-Mobile vehicle (Mobile Filtration Vehicle which removes salinity from water) that both rode in during PM Modi’s visit. This will take place through video link from Banaskantha where the vehicle has already arrived from Israel.

Background of iCreate

Tapping the potential from all over the world, icreate aims to develop an ecosystem in India which may be able to generate large quantity of quality entrepreneurs. In their own words, they wish to be a one stop shop for ‘money, mentors and markets’ offering end to end solutions to the entrepreneurs. The services they provide are grooming, incubation, mentoring, networking and angel funding.

The Centre also plans to tie-up with similar institutions/ incubators around the globe and network with their resources, mentors and educators. In this context, they had visited Israel last year in order to understand the Israeli ecosystem of innovation which has made Israel the Start-up Nation with the highest per capita innovation in the world. They visited several incubators, angel funds and innovation supporting institutions such as Israel Innovation Authority, Start-up Nation Central and technology transfer arms of several universities.

The Chairman of the Advisory Board is Mr. Dilip Shanghvi, Founder &MD of Sun Pharmaceuticals. The Chairman of icreate Board is Mr. Manoj Kumar Das, Principal Secretary, Govt of Gujarat.

DeshGujarat