by Xinhua writer Chen Wenxian
JERUSALEM, May 1 (Xinhua) -- A contest for winning the opportunity to enter the Chinese market was held on Tuesday evening in Israel's costal city of Tel Aviv with the participation of 10 Israel hi-tech startups.
Three out of the 10 competitors excelled in the contest. Keepod won the first place, while Pzartech, which exerts efforts on reducing the downtime related to mechanical parts identification, and Cosmo, which has developed a removable light connected to a mobile application for cyclists, won the second and third place, respectively.
The three winners will fly to Guiyang, capital city of China's southwestern province of Guizhou, and attend the global semi-finals and finals of 2019 China International Big Data Fusion Innovation & Artificial Intelligence (AI) Global Competition, which will be held in May.
More win-win cooperation opportunities would be created through the platform of the global competition at a time when ties between China and Israel are getting closer, said Cui Yuting, counselor of science and technology at Chinese Embassy in Israel.
With this platform, Israeli hi-tech companies have the chance to learn more information about Chinese companies, investors, industrial policies and Guiyang, which is known as "Data Valley of China," added Cui.
Hosted by China International Big Data Industry Expo Organizing Committee, the competition included domestic and international series in six regions and was held in four Chinese cities of Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu and Shenzhen, and Tel Aviv in Israel and Frankfurt in Germany.
During the 2019 Big Data Expo to be held in Guiyang, winners from six regions will gather and showcase their hi-tech innovations.
The global competition is committed to promoting the development, innovation and collaboration of AI ecosystem in China and strengthening the China-global cooperation in the AI sector, while building an international AI platform to recruit the world-wide elites who participate in the competition, said Wang Huanyi, deputy director of the organizing committee of the competition, in an interview with Xinhua.
Sources from the Israeli non-profit organization Start-Up Nation Central showed that there are now about 6,000 hi-tech startups operating in Israel.
As more platforms are established for the cooperation between China and Israel in the hi-tech sector, more Israeli hi-tech companies are eager to grab opportunities in Chinese market which has hugh potentials.
"We are at a stage that we can create real sustainable impact and scale our solution and this competition was exactly the venue to start doing that," said Nissan Bahar, co-founder and CEO of the company Keepod.
"We see great opportunities to make an impact in China. We focus on education and youth. We want to approach a new market. So China is super important for us," Bahar told Xinhua.
It is the second time that such contest has been held in Israel since 2018. The contest was considered an important platform by many Israeli hi-tech startups to tap into the Chinese market, said Zheng Xiaoxing, general manager of Techcode Israel, an accelerator founded by Chinese company Techcode.
The contest was also a meaningful bridge to push forward the cooperation between China and Israel in the hi-tech sector at both governmental and company levels, Zheng added.
