From Assisting Hearing-Impaired to Producing Water, Startups Showcase Solutions at Jerusalem Event

MassChallenge Israel, the country's biggest science and technology accelerator event, enabled companies to present innovative solutions for complex problems, with nine companies chosen as the winners

Dozens of startups from around the world showcased their innovations in a range of fields at the MassChallenge Israel science and technology accelerator event in Jerusalem this month.

After the number was reduced to 49 finalists, the judging panel at the finale chose nine winners, seven of them Israeli companies, one from Colombia, and one from the United Kingdom. Each winner will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the United States to meet with potential investors and partners.

Among the winners this year were: H2OLL, a company that produces water from the air; Pregnantech, which has developed a physical device that can delay pre-term births; Origametria, a tool that teaches geometry using origami to students who struggle with the subject; and CODA, which enables spoken languages to be translated into sign language in real time, assisting the hearing-impaired. The companies were assessed based on their business strategies, the potential positive impact of their ideas globally, and their progress over the course of the program.

CODA’s CEO, Shani Bibi, herself the child of hearing-impaired parents, gave an emotional acceptance speech in which she expressed the hope that one day, her parents and others like them would be able to attend an event like MassChallenge and understand everyone around them.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in the US, MassChallenge describes itself as “the global network for innovators working to solve massive challenges,” with more than 3,000 startups having participated to date.

MassChallenge Israel, founded in 2016 and supported by the Israeli government through the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and the Jerusalem Development Authority, claims to be the largest and most diverse zero-equity accelerator in Israel, each year accelerating 40 to 50 companies as well as running various innovation programs. More than 375 companies have graduated from the Early-Stage Accelerator Program and Israeli alumni have reportedly raised over $1.1 billion in investment funds and employ over 17,500 people.

The MassChallenge program involves an elimination competition in which hundreds of companies are whittled down to a few dozen finalists over the course of several months. During this time, participating startups also receive personalized mentoring and aid to assist their companies and fill in gaps in founders’ knowledge.

Among this year’s finalists, although ultimately not one of the winners, was RedC Biotech, a company that is developing a process for using stem cells to create unlimited amounts of donor-free universal red blood cells that could be used in life-saving transfusions. The company has previously received accolades and global interest, including winning $500,000 at the inaugural Aviram technology awards in Dubai in 2022, hosted by the Aviram Family Foundation and Forbes magazine. Foundation founder and entrepreneur Ziv Aviram, who founded Israeli driver assistance tech company, MobileEye, also provided RedC Biotech with professional support as part of the prize.

Because I’m a scientist, I don’t have enough business background. So I learned a lot that people learn in business school or from life that helped me.

But at the MassChallenge event, RedC Biotech founder and CEO Dr. Ari Gargir said that he still had much to learn.

“Because I’m a scientist, I don’t have enough business background,” he said. “So I learned a lot that people learn in business school or from life that helped me. Everything from doing a term sheet to legal matters. And of course we had mentors that taught us how to do other things as well. … It was wonderful.”

The contest was judged by a panel including industry experts, investors, technical workers, and data analysts.

MassChallenge makes those connections through its network of partners, alumni and donors to put them in front of the right people to help make their businesses companies grow

“We put them [the contestants] in front of investors and industry experts,” said Motti Sigel, MassChallenge Israel’s managing director and himself a MassChallenge winner from 2018.

“We also tailor-make it to them. So each founder has his or her own goals for their company and MassChallenge makes those connections through its network of partners, alumni and donors to put them in front of the right people to help make their businesses companies grow.”

Sigel added: “We have startups from Morocco, Ukraine, Algeria, France, the US, Singapore, and India … and these founders are solving problems that they encounter in their lives.”

Setting MassChallenge apart is the fact that the accelerator takes no equity in its participants’ businesses. The program is funded entirely through volunteer services and grants gifted by large partnering companies, including ARC Impact, the Modern Agriculture Foundation, and Delta-KLM.

However, the partners do benefit by being first in line to invest in companies whose business models and innovations are considered likely to succeed by virtue of their advancement through MassChallenge. The Jerusalem ministry, as well as Israel’s security organizations, are also among the beneficiaries.

Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan Nahoum said: “It was the Jerusalem Development Authority, a sister company of the City of Jerusalem and a company on which I serve on the executive board, which advocated for MassChallenge to come to Jerusalem and to invest funds to bring MassChallenge to Jerusalem. We understood that it could be a game changer … both for Jerusalem’s brand and also in terms of the international talent that we could attract, and the incredible innovations that we could make together.”

Previous MassChallenge winners include Beewise, an artificial intelligence and robotics-driven beehive design and management company that works to protect bees and, by extension, the global food supply; Genetika-Plus, which combines AI and stem-cell technology for optimized psychiatric and neurological healthcare; and Liquid360, which creates integrated, mobile real-time video surveillance models.

Co-founder and CEO of Liquid360 Alisa Givertz said the concept was inspired by the many hours it once took a hotel to find her young daughter who had become lost. Liquid360 has partnered with security organizations, including the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel police, as well as the port of Ashdod and the City of Jerusalem, to conduct its proof of concept.

Asked if her patented technology was being used to spy on Israelis, Givertz said, “Absolutely not.” She said cameras were already in place, but the technology brought all the images into a contextual and understandable view, “instead of the matrix wall of screens we see in the movies, which doesn’t work.”