Israel’s postal service is seeking to bear a modernization makeover by calling on startups to check out their applied sciences inside the state-owned firm, which has typically been criticized for poor service to customers, with lengthy strains at service facilities and letters arriving late or by no means.
The goal is to create an infrastructure of superior options that may assist the agency in its core operations, logistics, on-line buying and selling and monetary companies, the Israel Postal Firm mentioned in a press release final week.
The postal firm may also arrange an innovation heart for technological entrepreneurship, which can open in Tel Aviv within the coming months, the assertion mentioned.
The 2 initiatives are the primary in a sequence of enterprise collaborations the postal firm is looking for to arrange with industries, primarily based on the concept the postal infrastructure can function a platform for the event of improvements that stem from the nation’s tech ecosystem.
The cooperation with the startup firms will give attention to and help the event of merchandise and ventures in areas related to the corporate’s future operations, the assertion mentioned, together with on-line buying and selling, superior monetary companies, logistics and good transportation, synthetic intelligence, web of issues (IoT), enhancing service and shopper expertise, queuing and demand administration, cybersecurity, data safety and blockchain applied sciences.
As a part of the plan, the Israel Postal Firm will supply startups entry to the postal infrastructure, together with its knowledge and nationwide branches, in addition to consultants from a wide range of fields, parallel firms in Israel and overseas, and academia.
The chosen startups will start pilot initiatives with the Postal Firm, and on the finish of every undertaking the expertise can be assessed to see if the options might be carried out into the corporate’s service and/or funding within the startup must be made.
The initiative comes as Israel has set out plans to privatize its state-owned postal companies after years wherein the corporate has been affected by a drop in profitability and money movement and from elevated competitors from different companies.
In July, a ministerial committee in command of the privatization of government-held firms accredited the sale of a 40 % stake within the agency. An preliminary 20% stake can be offered through a personal tender to a strategic investor in Israel or overseas. The remaining 20% stake can be offered off, inside two years of the sale of the preliminary tranche, in a public providing on the Tel Aviv Inventory Change.