"In the coming years we will eliminate the need for amniocentesis"

"My partner and I founded the company at the beginning of the year after years of dreaming about it - producing egg protein from plants. We built a research and development plan, we wrote a patent on the platform and we also conducted research in the laboratory and, of course, recruitment," said Maya Sapir-Mir, a founding partner at POLOPO, speaking on the panel that took place at the finals of Calcalist and Poalim Hi-Tech's StartUp+ competition.

Other participants in the panel were Yuval Shafrir, co-founder and CEO, Urbanico, Oren Tadmor, co-founder and CEO, IdentifAI Genetics, Or Litman, co-founder, EyeLight Technologies, Kfir Nissim, CEO of Pickommerce AI Robotics, and Matan Elmalam, CEO of Blyp.

Startup+ Final Panel

According to Sapir-Mir: "Now we are making contacts in the food industry and approaching the largest food companies in Israel and the world. In our plan, within eight months we will have samples for testing for the food industry, which will allow us to develop a commercial product that is planned to reach the market in about two years." Sapir-Mir further stated: "In terms of research and development, we have two main stages - creating a plant platform, that is, an edible plant that accumulates large amounts of protein, and then within a year we will be able to develop an egg protein, one that foams and glues, and in another two years we will have a product for a pilot, an initial creation for field trials. Then we'll really start making it commercial and we'll be on the market in two years."

According to Yuval Shafrir, founding partner and CEO of Urbanico: "We solve a problem for insurance companies that is divided into two aspects, urban information is of course public domain but the ability to use it is limited, to say the least. In the first aspect, we work with information that comes from 500 local authorities in the U.S. and we have the ability to obtain the databases that are publicly available - and beyond that, we recently recruited the former mayor of Indianapolis, which allows us to build a process for receiving information from local authorities. And in the technological aspect, it must be understood that upon obtaining the information - it must be put in order, because each local authority works differently - and here our technology puts things in order, it makes it possible to compare information permits between cities." Shafrir also noted: "There are many examples of such databases. Our customers are the insurance companies and we are focused on databases that represent risks to customers, for example predicting fires, vandalism. We enable insurance companies to assess risks in a better way."

According to Oren Tadmor, founding partner and CEO of IdentifAI Genetics, their technology enables complete genetic sequencing of the fetus, relying on a simple blood test from the mother. “Today there are two significant options for identifying genetic problems, but the ability is to identify only individual syndromes. There is an amniotic fluid test that is considered invasive. We manage to perform a test with a very high resolution. Our accuracy is close to 100 percent and we are constantly in the process of improvement. Today there is no ability to identify the syndromes we identify in a simple and non-invasive way. If we rule out a disease, that means the baby is healthy. We believe that within a few years we will eliminate the need for an amniotic fluid test.” Tadmor also stated: "When we go to the market in a year, the price will be hundreds of dollars for the test and over 50% will be covered by insurance companies in the U.S., which means the cost will be the same as other tests in the field."

According to Or Litman, co-founder of EyeLight Technologies: "Omer and I started our entrepreneurial journey because our families have underlying diseases over the years and thus there is a loss of independence - and therefore we created a system that identifies objects in real time in relation to their location in space. The process is in-depth and we tried to check where the technology breaks the market for the visually impaired and we discovered that there are also people who see situations where their vision is limited. After all, from childhood we feel, touch, even when shopping in a supermarket. And we came to the conclusion that we can provide value in the transition from the physical to the digital world. It works in the worlds of gaming, e-commerce, and also in simulations for civil and medical needs." Litman further stated: "Today there are many solutions for the visually impaired. Our great advantage is that we capture a complete image of the environment in real time. The place around the visually impaired is accessed in real time, from a static image to a 3D model."

According to Kfir Nissim, CEO of Pickommerce AI Robotics: "There are many solutions to the issue of warehouses, but we are focused on a global problem - the packaging problem, this is particularly relevant in the world of e-commerce. It is difficult for a robot to imitate the intuitiveness of a human being. We approach this world from a method that is anchored in lifting and sticking. This way we manage to replace the human packer and thus the entire supply sequence is robotic. Our team is skilled and unique and includes two professors from Ben Gurion University and the Technion." According to Nissim: "Our solution does not depend on the size of the client. This solution will be economical both for a small body that has ten packers in the warehouse and for a body that has five hundred packers that work in shifts, and our system does not take breaks."

According to Matan Elmalam, CEO of Blyp: "Most analytical solutions require a business owner to sit down at the end of the day and understand what is happening in the business. Our approach is different and the information, the data of the business, allows us to perform automatic analysis. We serve 300 small businesses." Elmalam also noted: "We don't want to be another data analysis company because we are in a layer above this method. We collect the information from Google and Facebook, among others - and make it accessible."