Technologies developed under BIA will be available to both countries for their domestic applications

India and Israel on Tuesday signed a Bilateral Innovation Agreement (BIA) to promote innovation and accelerated research and development in startups and MSMEs of both countries for the development of dual use technologies.

According to India’s Ministry of Defence, the agreement was signed between Secretary, Department of Defence, R&D and Chairman DRDO Dr G Satheesh Reddy and Head of DDR&D, Israel BG (Retd) Dr Daniel Gold in New Delhi.

Under the agreement, startups and industry of both countries will work together to bring out next generation technologies and products in the areas such as drones, robotics, Artificial Intelligence, quantum technology, photonics, bio-sensing, brain-machine Interface, energy storage and wearable devices, natural language processing, maintained the statement issued by the Ministry of Defence.

Products and technologies will be customized to meet unique requirements of both the countries, it noted.

As per the statement, the development efforts will be jointly funded by DRDO and DDR&D, Israel.

India and Israel enjoy strong cooperation on security issues. There is a Joint Working Group (JWG) between the two countries to comprehensively review and guide all aspects of bilateral defence cooperation.

At the 15th India-Israel JWG meeting on bilateral defence cooperation held in Tel Aviv, last month, India and Israel agreed to form a task force to formulate a comprehensive 10-year roadmap to identify new areas of cooperation.