With the objective of further strengthening defence and strategic ties, India and Israel have entered into a Bilateral Innovation Agreement (BIA) to promote innovation and accelerated research and development in start-ups.
Giving details here on Tuesday, defence ministry officials said as a tangible demonstration of the growing India–Israel technological cooperation, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Directorate of Defence Research and Development (DDR&D), Ministry of Defence, Israel inked this BIA pact. It will also cater to the development of dual use technologies.
The agreement was signed between DRDO chief G Satheesh Reddy and Head of DDR&D Daniel Gold in New Delhi here on Tuesday.
Under the agreement, start-ups 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, Biosensing, Brain-Machine Interface, Energy Storage, Wearable Devices and Natural Language Processing.
Products and technologies will be customised to meet unique requirements of both the countries. The development efforts will be jointly funded by the DRDO and DDR&D, Israel. The technologies developed under the BIA will be available to both countries for their domestic applications, they said.
Israel has emerged a major defence partner of India since diplomatic relations were established between the two countries in the early 1990s.