Israeli start-up keeps bad bugs at bay, no poison needed

EdenShield’s GateKeeper kept almost 100% of crop-destroying pests out of greenhouses — without pesticides
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Farmers face a major crisis today — a “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” crisis. Farmers need to keep their fields free of insects that eat crops and destroy their livelihood.
However, the pesticides that are effective against those insects are causing major environmental damage, killing off not only pests, but helpful insects such as bees.

Studies have linked the disappearance of bees around the world, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, to the overuse of pesticides. Because bees are the effective pollinators of fruit trees — scientists believe that as much as one-third of human nutrition is due to bee pollination — fewer bees means less food. But without pesticides, bug infestations would rise significantly, causing just as many crop losses.

Fortunately, an Israeli start-up has developed a middle way — a system that enables farmers to protect their crops, while avoiding the use of environment-destroying pesticides. And a new study

conducted by that start-up, EdenShield, showed just how effective are the company’s natural pesticides, which have been developed from plants and herbs.

In the study, greenhouses in Italy where tomatoes are grown using EdenShield’s GateKeeper prevented close to 100% penetration of pests and led to a reduction of over 80% in the use of pesticides. Control greenhouses demonstrated pest penetration of over 500%.

EdenShield, a portfolio company of Trendlines Agtech, develops insect-control solutions derived from natural plant extracts. The products are nontoxic, so they pose no danger to growers or consumers. And they can be used throughout the growing period, especially during the critical pre-harvest period.

According to D. Todd Dollinger of the Trendlines Agtech accelerator, EdenShield’s products “have the capacity to make a major impact on our food chain, making production more efficient and consumption healthier.”

The Israeli-invented device that’s saving American lives in Afghanistan

The Israeli-invented device that’s saving American lives in Afghanistan
By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Then American troops are injured in the field, the first piece of life-saving medical equipment they may come into contact with nowadays is an Israeli-invented mini-sized manual ventilator. And not just American soldiers on the battlefield; the Pocket BVM has been used to treat thousands of people at the scene of numerous natural disasters, like in the huge earthquake that devastated Nepal earlier this year.
“The US Army decided that our Pocket BVM (bag valve mask device) would fit into combat scenarios much better than traditional BVMs,” said Dov Maisel, an American immigrant to Israel

who invented the unique manual ventilator with his friend and fellow United Hatzalah volunteer Akiva Pollack. “It’s really taken off since the Americans adopted it last year, and now we are working with several NATO armies, first-aid groups in Europe and Asia, businesses, hospitals, and airlines among others.”

To that latter category add El Al, said Maisel; the Israeli airline several months ago signed a contract with MicroBVM, the commercial supplier of the device, and now all El Al planes have miniature BVMs scattered throughout their cabins, so that life-giving oxygen can be provided to a patient quickly and efficiently

The story of the Pocket BVM is one of ingenuity, a drive for start-up success – and a “Jewish heart,” as Maisel puts it.

Two Israeli inventions voted CES favorites

There were two winners in the Last Gadget Standing contest – and both were made in Israel

By David Shamah, The Times of Israel

Thousands of companies showed off tens of thousands of products to over 100,000 visitors at this year’s just-concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas – with the action followed by millions on line. And when the smoke cleared, there were just two gadgets left standing – both of them Israeli.

Both the Last Gadget Standing Live Audience winner, and the Last Gadget Standing Online winner – the VUZE Camera from HumanEyes Technologies, and the Steam CC Ripple Maker, respectively – were feted by no less a tech personality than David Pogue, founder of Yahoo! Tech and a frequent contributor to top news sites like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many others. “It’s awesome to see companies bare their corporate souls in such fun and imaginative ways,” Pogue said of the Last Gadget Standing contest, praising the participants – and especially the winners – for their innovative tech.

Last Gadget Standing, considered the highlight of CES, is a knockdown dragout contest where the top tech winners take all. Twenty five new (created in the latest calendar year) products or technologies at CES, as decided by a panel of 11 judges and on-line voters, are then narrowed down to ten finalists, who show off their tech to thousands in a live show, and millions following on-line. The audience picks its favorite, as does the online crowd.

Israeli-developed ‘nano-nose’ can sniff out bombs, drugs

Tracense’s homeland security odor-detection technology is set to come on the market soon.

Tracense Israeli company, developed “nano-nose” could help homeland security officers sniff out explosives — as well as drugs, large amounts of cash, and even small metal items that are banned from planes. “And we do it with far less false positives than dogs or other technologies that are being

used now to analyze the odor of explosives and other items,” said Matan Barami, chief chemist at Israeli nanotech start-up Tracense.

Barami was speaking Monday at this year’s edition of NanoIsrael, a biennial event on the burgeoning Israeli nanotechnology industry. Over the past nine years, Israeli nanotechnology researchers have filed 1,590 patents (769 granted so far), published 12,392 scholarly articles on the subject, and had 129 nano-success stories, which include establishing start-ups, selling ideas or technology to multinationals, licensing a patent, etc., according to Rafi Koriat, chairman of the event at Tel Aviv University.

The conference, Koriat said, is a place for top researchers and leaders from Israel and abroad to meet and discuss the latest developments in nanotechnology, “and provides visitors with a first look at cutting-edge technologies, leading scientific achievements and unique business and investment opportunities.”

Why Indian IT Companies Have Set Their Sights on Brazil

Indian IT companies have their eyes on Brazil -- and it is not just exports to North America that have attracted interest. The domestic market, in both software and IT services, has also caught their attention. Here's why Indian companies are looking to Brazil for growth.

By Silvia Rosa for Near shore Americas  

Among the largest exporters of software and IT services, Indian companies have increased their investments in Brazil, aiming to benefit from the growth potential of the domestic market and expansion of their operations in Latin America. The largest Indian IT companies, such as Tech Mahindra, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, and HCL have recently started operations in Brazil to both serve the local market and provide services for global clients.

This is the case for Infosys, the second largest Indian IT company, which opened a development center in Brazil in Nova Lima, in the state of Minas Gerais, in 2009. “Initially the aim was to provide services for some multinational customers based in Brazil,” said Claudio Elsas, Infosys’ CEO in Brazil.

In 2012, Infosys acquired Lodestone, which specialized in the SAP system. Currently the company offers several lines of IT services in Brazil, including management consulting focused on SAP and Oracle’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, development of IT solutions and business process outsourcing (BPO).

The company has about 1,000 employees in Brazil in addition to maintaining local operations in Mexico, Argentina, and Costa Rica. “The advantage of being a global company is that we can bring the latest IT solutions to the local market faster,” said Elsas.

TCS is the largest IT Indian company, and Brazil accounted for 20% of its turnover in Latin America in 2013. The company’s goal is to raise its revenues in the region to US$1 billion by 2016, reaching 4% of global turnover.

In Brazil, TCS has a development center in Tambore in the state of São Paulo, and it has focused on services related to mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and high-performance computing. The local presence is essential for growing in Brazil. “Besides the language barrier, there is the high cost of importing services in Brazil,” said Elsas.

The main factor that has attracted these multinationals to Brazil is the size of the nation’s IT market. As the seventh largest in the world, it reached US$60 billion in 2014, an increase of 6.7% over the prior year, and with an investment growth of 4.04% last year, it was above the global average. “The main factor that has attracted multinationals to Brazil is the growth potential of the domestic IT market,” said Jorge Sukarie, CEO of theBrazilian Association of Software Companies (ABES). “The country is among the 10 fastest-growing IT markets and may overtake France over the next five years.”

France placed fifth in the investment ranking in 2014, and the Brazilian domestic market is already larger than that of India (eighth), whose investments in the IT sector totaled US$40 billion in 2014. Brazil also dominates its region, representing 46% of the IT market in Latin America. Considering just software and services, growth was 9.7% in 2014, totaling US$25.2 billion — double the Indian market and its $12 billion.

Another advantage of the Brazilian market is that it is located in the same time zone as North America, which makes working on projects involving a global team easier.

However, since most parts of the Indian IT market are focused on export, the international market in Brazil accounts for only 1.93% of the IT sector.

Foreign companies have a large market share in the software segment in Brazil. In 2014, the programs developed abroad accounted for 75.5% of this sector. On the other hand, domestic developments represent 85.9% of the service market.

In order to grow in the Brazilian IT service market, Tech Mahindra has chosen to make some strategic acquisitions. The company, which is part of the one of largest global IT services providers, the Mahindra Group, acquired a 51% stake in the Brazilian SAP consulting company, IT Complex, in 2013 and it is considering new acquisitions or joint ventures with local partners in order to increase its service portfolio in Brazil, especially in cloud computing and BPO.

In February, the company signed an agreement with IBM to develop a cloud application platform. Tech Mahindra also signed a partnership with Equinix at the beginning of the year to use its data center platforms, aiming to expand its business in Brazil and in the Latin American region in the outsourcing and cloud computer segments, providing services such as network operational center (NOC), host operational center (HOC), and security operational center (SOC), as well as support to critical applications and infrastructure services.

Having maintained local operations in Brazil for around five years, Tech Mahindra offers IT services in consulting, enterprise business solutions, BPO and IT infrastructure. Besides this, the group has two companies, Comviva and Canvas, that offer mobile solutions.

In an interview with Nearshore Americas in February, Alberto Tosatti, CEO of Tech Mahindra at that time, said that the company showed a 30% increase in turnover in 2014, and the forecast for this year is to grow 25% in dollar terms in Brazil.

The Brazilian subsidiary accounts for 2% of total revenue and the goal for Latin America is to achieve 10% of revenues by 2018, with Brazil representing half of that.

Some Indian companies also use the infrastructure in Brazil to export IT services to other countries or work on global projects. Currently about 20% of Tech Mahindra revenues in Brazil come from services to countries such as the United States, Canada, and Europe.

The Indian giant of IT services and outsourcing, Wipro, also has a global delivery center in Curitiba, in the state of Parana, which is integrated with the company’s mega centers in India and provides a wide range of IT services for both local and global customers, such as development and maintenance applications (Oracle and SAP), IT infrastructure management, big data and analytics, cloud computing, and outsourcing.

The company began its operations in Brazil in 2007 with the acquisition of the retail consulting firm, Enable, from the Portuguese group, Sonae.

Despite the devaluation of the Brazilian real, the high cost of doing business in Brazil makes the Brazilian exports less competitive in comparison with other emerging markets like India.

Sukarie explained that the bureaucracy, the tax burden, and the high labor costs are among the main obstacles to operate in the domestic market. In addition, companies have difficulty in finding qualified workforce and staff fluent in other languages, especially English.

Some companies, like Infosys, have sent Brazilian employees to be trained in India or have brought Indian technicians to train the local staff.