Israel: Assisting Both Customers and Retailers Alike

Many times, a call to a representative requiring assistance on a certain product or service can result in being anything but useful. Customers can become even more bewildered after completing the call than before they began it. Enter Israeli start-up CallVU, founded in 2012 by Ori Faran, Doron Rotstein and Roee Halfon, who have created a system where a customer requesting help can see what advice the person on the other end of the phone is offering. Designed for mobile phones, the system operates in the following way: customers who call a help agent submit their names and wait for an agent to answer. If they do not wish to remain on the line, they are given the alternative of a callback. When the "help" call begins, the customer reports their problem and the agent can not only reply verbally, but also with texts and pictures-sending images and further directions on how to solve the problem directly to the customer's screen.

The company is said to possess so much potential that they recently won $25,000 in the second annual MasterCard Israel Technology Award, a competition that included 45 start-ups vying for the coveted prize awarded to emerging companies with novel ideas that can both help customers and retailers.

Below is the link to the article:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/an-israeli-start-ups-solution-for-the-customer-service-blues/

Ori Faran and Doron Rotstein accepting the MasterCard Israel Technology Award in a ceremony in Tel-Aviv.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/an-israeli-start-ups-solution-for-the-customer-service-blues/

Israel: Tikun Olam, One Child At a Time

In central Africa, the Kairo School and Orphanage serves as a place of refuge for children whose parents have died, many of them from AIDS. The orphanage allows the children to continue to develop in a safe environment. However, up until the implementation of Innovation: Africa, the orphanage suffered from an energy issue. Due to the location having no electricity, the only manner in which the orphanage could illuminate the rooms at night was by using kerosene gas or candles. However, this was extremely dangerous, especially for kids, and the faint quality of the light was damaging the children's vision.

Enter Innovation: Africa, founded by Sivan Ya'ari, which installed an Israeli-developed solar energy system in these areas. These systems have provided light to not only the 500 children of the Kairo School, but to hundreds of thousands of residents in the region as well. The project is distinctive in Africa and it recently won a prestigious award from the United Nations. With this new-found light, the children in the orphanage can now have more prolonged days, with extra evening programs teaching them to how to read and write.

In addition to light, the Innovation: Africa projects supply 20,000 liters of clean water a day (due to the solar water pumps they have installed), and drip irrigation systems have produced sources of food and income for farmers and their families. Solar energy units yield not only light for schools, but refrigeration for hospitals, which for the first time can stock and store medicines safely. Also, because of the solar-powered refrigerators, vaccines for many diseases that are prevalent in Africa have been administered to over 300,000 people.


Below is the link to the article and an interesting video featuring Sivan Ya'ari:
1) http://www.timesofisrael.com/lighting-up-africa-with-israeli-technology/
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh3D2j-pnYg

Sivan Ya'ari being presented with an award for Innovation: Africa at an awards ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/lighting-up-africa-with-israeli-technology/

Onavo: Optimizing Mobile Devices

Recently, Facebook acquired Israel-start up Onavo, a Tel Aviv-based mobile analytics company, for estimated sums of 100 million to 200 million dollars. The company, founded in 2010, focuses on two aspects. One is developing consumer-concentrated software to help optimize devices, app performance, and battery life on iOS and Android devices. The other is an analytics business for mobile companies to chart how well their own apps are faring, and to compare that against apps of their competitors. It had raised nearly $13 million in venture funding from investors that included Sequoia, Horizons Ventures, Motorola and Magma Venture Partners.

The acquisition of the company has been seen as a manner in which to boost Mark Zuckerberg's  Internet.org, an initiative to bring the entire world online. Facebook can also use the company to track  user activity data and target trends in apps that exhibit potential, giving them the ability to spot, at a very early stage the types of apps that are gaining favor with the public. This company can also allow  them an immense amount of insight into how people are utilizing their smartphones.

Links to further information:

1) http://allthingsd.com/20131015/facebooks-120-million-onavo-buy-comes-with-lots-of-upside/

2) http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/13/facebook-buys-mobile-analytics-company-onavo-and-finally-gets-its-office-in-israel/

Onavo's logo.
http://www.internap.com/wp-content/uploads/Onavo_logo_big_BoW.png

Waze: Outsmarting Traffic

Being stuck in traffic can be an exasperating and often infuriating experience. The endless amount of cars that do not appear to be moving at any significant rate is enough to make anyone irritated. Enter Israeli-startup company Waze Mobile, which produced Waze, a GPS-based geographical navigation application for smartphones with GPS capability. The app consists of screens which offer turn-by-turn information and user-submitted travel times and route specifics, downloading location-relevant information. The company was purchased by Google in 2013 for an estimated price of 1.3 billion dollars.

Waze emerged with Best Overall Mobile App award at the 2013 Mobile World Congress, and when it was acquired by Google on June 11, 2013, all of Waze's 100 employees received an average of about $1.2 million, which constitutes the largest sum given to employees in the history of Israeli high tech. Below are some recent advances the app has made over the years:

2011: Waze Mobile updated the software to include community-centered events of interest, such as local functions that ranged from street fairs to protests, that were occurring in real-time.

June 2012: Waze launched an update to display fuel prices. 

June 2013: Waze implemented a global project that would allow future road closures and real-time traffic updates during significant events in a certain country, for example, the Tour de France.

Waze's website: https://www.waze.com

Link to article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waze

Waze's logo and slogan.
http://www.internap.com/wp-content/uploads/Onavo_logo_big_BoW.png