MoU Signed by Indian Chamber of Commerce with South Africa’s Innovate Durban

At the ongoing India StartUp Week organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Innovate Durban.

The MoU will help the StartUps based out India and South Africa to collaborate and share business intelligence.
Dr. Rajeev Singh, Director General of ICC and Ms Aurelia Albert, CEO of Innovate Durban jointly signed the MoU document to make it operational.

Speaking on the occasion Dr Rajeev Singh, Director General, ICC said, “Startups from both countries can share experiences and best practices. It becomes a good option to collaborate and look at what each side has done.”
Ms Aurelia Albert, CEO, Innovate Durban, said, “I am quite excited about the future collaboration. There is finally an agreement on basis of which Startups of two countries can collaborate.”

Earlier during his deliberation on startups from India and South Africa, Jaideep Sarkar, High Commissioner of India to South Africa, Government of India, remarked, “There is potential of learning in development of each other markets.”

Some of the areas where both the startups can collaborate, could be fintech, e-learning and social entrepreneurship. The High Commissioner also gave the example of a South African venture capitalist investing about USD 540 mn in an Indian e-learning startup.

Talking about importance of startups in today’s era, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim, Union Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Federal Republic of Nigeria commented, “Success of a nation now depends on success of its start-ups.” India and Nigeria, he said, should collaborate to promote start-ups as Nigeria has lot to learn from Indian start-ups.

Summing up the session, Abhay Thakur, High Commissioner of India to Nigeria, said, “An MoU between National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and ICC can also be quickly worked out.”

Earlier sharing about his experience on startups, Dr C N Ashwathnarayan, Minister of Higher Education, Information Technology & Biotechnology and Science & Technology, Skill Development, Entrepreneurship, and Livelihood,Government of Karnataka remarked “With regard to start up we came up with an innovative programme ELEVATE and ELEVATE-UNNATI. It was very equitable and inclusive. We have included all sections of society. We have funded 489 startups with more than Rs 120 crores without equity.”

He also mentioned about the role of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) in developing startup ambience in Karnataka. “Through KEDEM we are targeting to have a minimum of 7000 startups across sectors,” he added.

Mr Manish Gupta, Director at Google Research, India discussed about use of Artificial Intelligence in areas of democratising access of language information, health care and water sustainability & agriculture.

Mr Calvin Yi, President and CEO-WEVIO, South Korea spoke about opportunities of Indian startups to collaborate with Korean companies in areas such as e-mobility, agriculture and tourism.

Source : UNIIndia