Israel venture capital crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has announced a strategic business and technology scouting partnership with Toyota Tsusho Corporation, one of Japan’s general trading companies and a member of the Toyota Group, which encompasses 17 companies including Toyota Motor, and Denso.
OurCrowd will act as a technology scout and source innovation for investments in both Israel and worldwide. The partnership combines the strength of Jerusalem-based OurCrowd’s Israeli and global network, robust deal flow pipeline and growing portfolio of 200 promising startups along with the broad reach and core values of Toyota Tsusho to seek innovative products and services in their key business sectors of Mobility, Resources and Environment, Life and Community.
The scouting agreement will seek out startup leaders in autonomous driving with a focus on sensors, image recognition, data compression, and security. The partnership will seek out disruptive technologies in a diverse group of other sectors such as smart cities, medtech, including cancer examination, digital health, environmental technologies, and big data in agriculture.
Toyota Tsusho EVP Regional CEO & CTO Minoru Murata said, "The future belongs to the bold who are implementing game changing technologies. Toyota Tsusho and its 58,000 employees all over the world are proud to be leaders in our focus industries, but to ensure our future leadership we must identify, invest and work with startups who are changing the world we live in. Our partnership with OurCrowd will bring us these key technologies and leaders to work together on the next generation of global challenges."
OurCrowd founder and CEO Jon Medved said, "We are proud to be partnering with a general trading company such as Toyota Tsusho. Not only do they represent a 70 year tradition of excellence in global business, but they are focused on solving real global problems. Together we can help startups turn into "scaleups" by providing access to Toyota Tsusho’s unrivaled platform that can deploy new technologies and products quickly and effectively in over 120 markets around the world. This is good news for startups and good news for the world."
OurCrowd is an innovation and investment platform that connects investors and startups around the world, and has already raised over $1.28 billion in funding commitments and has made investments in 200 diversified companies and funds.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 23, 2019
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