Jewish Times Asia April 2013
15
Business News
Singtel and Amdocs to open a joint development centre
Qoros launches first model in Europe
Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel), Asia’s leading communications group and the largest multicountry mobile operator in the world, and Amdocs, the leading provider of customer experience systems and services, announced in March the opening of a joint development centre in Israel. This is the first such collaboration in Israel by a service provider from Asia Pacific and will serve as a gateway for local start-ups into the fastestgrowing region in the world.
Chinese-Israeli carmaker Qoros announced its entry into Europe, the latest attempt by a Chinese manufacturer to gain a foothold in the region’s highly competitive market. Qoros, a joint venture between Chinese automaker Chery Automobile Company and Israel Corporation, an industrial conglomerate, launched its ‘3 Sedan’ at the Geneva Motor Show held in Switzerland in March.
SingTel’s move into Israel is part of its strategic plan to increase investments in research and development. This is also part of its recently established global innovation initiative, ‘L!feLabs’, to inspire and enable ideas to become reality. It aims to accelerate innovation through collaboration with strategic partners, renowned research institutes as well as eco-systems of start-ups and incubators for which Israel is so renowned. ‘SingTel L!feLabs @ Israel’ with Amdocs will focus on reaching out to the local community of entrepreneurs to develop capabilities in key areas as well as conduct proof of concepts and the eventual commercialisation of innovative technologies, products and services in the 26 countries where the group operates. In conjunction with the opening of the development centre, SingTel is launching the L!feLabs website. It is another avenue to engage startups and developers to build, test and deploy new services and solutions for the 473 million mobile customers across the Asia Pacific region served by SingTel. In addition to the development centre, SingTel will invest in three key areas in Israel. These are; investment in Israeli start-up companies aimed at advancing developments and technologies that match SingTel’s future plans. Working with Israeli academic or research institutes by funding studies conducted by the country’s universities or working on ideas created in such institutions. Thirdly, working with incubators and the angel community to look for interesting business and technology ideas from Israel. SingTel’s initial focus will be on voice and facial recognition as well as technologies that en-
Allen Lew and Eli Gelman
able mobile and Wi-fi networks to work more efficiently and seamlessly. Allen Lew Chief Executive Officer of Group Digital L!fe, SingTel, said: “As we move SingTel beyond just communications into becoming a multimedia digital provider, innovation is key to our transformation. Never before have we seen technology and business models changing so rapidly. To stay ahead of the market and anticipate customer needs, we have significantly expanded our investments in digital services that will help our customers discover new services, be informed, entertained or more productive.” He noted: “We have been extremely satisfied with the wealth of talent in Israel. We experienced this through our recently acquired global mobile advertising company Amobee which has a technology center in Israel, as well as through our venture capital investments in two Israeli companies in the mobile Internet business. This has propelled us to open this new development center to scout for new growth engines for SingTel.” “Amdocs has been dedicated to the communications industry for over 30 years and today our 20,000 employees serve the world’s leading service providers in over 60 countries,” said Eli Gelman, Chief Executive Officer of Amdocs Management Limited. “Opening a joint development and innovation center with a global leader such as the SingTel Group is a significant milestone in our history. It demonstrates the importance our customers place on our innovative offerings as well as our ability to accelerate and foster innovation by working together with the start-up community.” Gelman added: “We believe that this innovation and development centre is a win-win opportunity which will benefit all those involved: the SingTel
Group, Amdocs and young Israeli companies and start-ups.” The centre will be hosted on Amdocs’ Ra’anana campus. For the past five years, Amdocs has been methodologically fostering start-up innovation, and today has 75 active start-up partner companies, innovation programs at 12 universities worldwide, and more than 20 solutions incorporating start-up technology.
The car will be manufactured in China, and is set to go on sale there and in Eastern Europe this year, with a price below 20,000 euros (US$26,000), Vice President Volker Steinwascher told reporters.
Stefano Villanti, Executive Director of Sales, Service, Marketing and Product Strategy, revealed that Qoros is gearing up to produce 150,000 cars within two years, with a factory ca-
3 Sedan
pable of expanding production to 450,000 units if required.
Penned with European buyers in mind by ex-MINI designer Gert Hildebrand, the car is lower, wider and has a longer wheelbase than rivals like the Ford Focus and VW Golf. Despite its European intentions, over 50% of Qoros models will be sold in China.
Qoros also debuted its ‘Cross Hybrid Concept Car’ at the Geneva show.
’smart water firm’ to bring technologies to India Whitewater Technologies, an Israeli “smart water” network software management firm, has signed a cooperation agreement with an Indian environmental infrastructure firm. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, the firm provides software tools for overseeing water quality and operations. The company signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tatva Global Water Technologies, a Mumbai-based company that provides environmental and waste-management solutions for cities, towns and industries all over the subcontinent. Whitewater will bring to India its ‘WaterWall’ information technology, which performs analytics, automates procedures and provides security to water supplies, as well as its ‘BlueBox’ intel-
partnership. Tatva has a wealth of water quality and network-efficiency knowledge that we are certain will lead to successful delivery of any solution. Together, we will generate a set of solutions covering the needs for online water-quality monitoring and critical security awareness.” stated Ende. Issey Ende
ligent water analytics system, which analyses water quality in real time and detects abnormal events. “This agreement will enable us to penetrate the Indian market, focusing on our core water quality and security competencies,” said Issey Ende, CEO, Whitewater Technologies. “The relationship between the two firms will be a complementary, mutually beneficial
“Tatva technologies specialises in providing utility services and implementation of commercial and technical systems in the water utility industry,” commented K. Ashok Natarajan, CEO, Tatva. “We feel that the partnership with Whitewater provides a unique combination of industrial solutions and watermanagement systems aimed at improving overall utility performance and efficiency,” Natarajan concluded.
Orbotech wins Chinese flat panel display equipment deals Orbotech Limited announced that it has won significant bids for flat panel display (FPD) related equipment, totaling approximately US$40 million in value, from one of the largest liquid crystal display panel manufacturers in China. Most of this equipment is expected to be delivered during 2013. The systems, which include several of Orbotech’s latest generation automated optical inspection and array tester mod-
els, will be utilised in the fabrication of mobile devices and large screen televisions. Commenting on this announcement, Gil Oron, President of the FPD Division at Orbotech Ltd, said: “These important bids represent a significant investment by a major customer in the latest generation Orbotech equipment for its new and upgraded fabrication lines, in response to anticipated
increased demand in this part of the industry. Orbotech is proud to be a key contributor to the overall advancement of the FPD industry in China.” Orbotech is a leading provider of production solutions, primarily for manufacturers of printed circuit boards, flat panel displays and other electronic components. Headquartered in Israel, it operates from multiple locations internationally.