Singapore-Israel foundation dishes out S$10.6 million R&D funding

The Singapore-Israel Industrial R&D Foundation invested S10.6 million four 4 new research projects by Singaporean companies.

The SIIRD is a co-operation between the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) in Israel to promote joint industrial R&D projects between companies from Singapore and Israel. With SIIRD’s support, up to 50% of the eligible R&D costs of joint R&D projects will receive funding.These four projects are expected to generate cumulative revenues of about S$70million in the first three years of commercialization.

The projects encompass a wide range of technological advancements developed by the partner companies.The first project by Israeli firm CartaSense and Singaporean company iWOW Solutions is to design a comprehensive yet cost-effective cold chain management solution.

For industries that depend on maintaining stable environmental conditions to ensure freshness of products, such as agriculture and pharmaceutical conglomerates, it is important to have a system in place to continuously monitor any irregularities in temperature and humidity. The cold chain management solution will monitor changes in temperature and humidity and implement remedial actions instantly to prevent potential damage.

The second project involves a Smart Grid Compliant Smart Metering System by Israeli Yitran Communications Ltd and home-grown BBS Telecommunications Pte Ltd to optimize the use of electricity. It is expected to help consumers become more aware of their energy consumption, thereby saving money by shifting their energy usage between peak and non-peak periods accordingly. This should also help utility companies to increase revenues, lower overheads and optimise the use of expensive infrastructure assets.

The third project involves developing speech recognition technology to create a platform for indexing and searching through audio content. This is targeted for use in large customer care, call centres and the media and mass broadcasting industry. This is developed by Singaporean firm Mustard Technology Pte Ltd and Israeli speech recognition technology developer, Speech Modules Ltd.

The last project will be to develop a product that will allow end-users to view websites, web applications and the internet in a book-like interface by C.D.I Systems (1992) Ltd (Israel) and E-Book Systems Pte Ltd (Singapore).

Said Mr Richard Wan, CEO, E-Book Systems Pte Ltd, “With assistance from government agencies such as SIIRD, local companies such as ourselves, can leapfrog competition in the global marketplace to gain exposure into new markets in a more cost effective manner. More importantly, it helps us to connect with Israeli companies which have complementary technologies to ours and together, we can leverage on each other's strength to develop better products for the marketplace.”
To date, SIIRD has approved 95 projects with a total research investment of S$141million.