Global investment crowdfunding platform and Israel’s leading venture investor OurCrowd has partnered with the Toyota Tsusho Corporation (Toyota Tsusho), a member of the Toyota Group, which comprises of 17 companies including Toyota Motor. The new partnership will launch a new business that will act as a technology scout and source innovation and investments globally.
Laly David, OurCrowd’s Business Development Partner, will spearhead this effort along with OurCrowd’s 13 global offices.
According to OurCrowd, the partnership combines the strength of OurCrowd’s global deal flow pipeline along with the reach of Toyota Tsusho to seek innovative products and services in their key business sectors of Mobility, Resources & Environment, Life & Community.
The scouting agreement will seek out “next generation startup leaders in the areas of Autonomous driving.”
Additionally, the partnership will seek out disruptive technologies in a diverse group of other sectors such as smart cities, Medtech, digital health, environmental technologies, and big data in agriculture.
Jon Medved, founder and CEO of OurCrowd commented on the partnership:
“We are proud to be partnering with a general trading company such as Toyota Tsusho. Not only do they represent a 70 year tradition of excellence in global business, but they are focused on solving real global problems. Together we can help startups turn into “scaleups” by providing access to Toyota Tsusho’s unrivaled platform that can deploy new technologies and products quickly and effectively in over 120 markets around the world. This is good news for startups and good news for the world.”
Minoru Murata Executive VP, Regional CEO & CTO of Toyota Tsusho, said the future belongs to the bold who are implementing game-changing technologies.
“Toyota Tsusho and its 58,000 employees all over the world are proud to be leaders in our focus industries, but to ensure our future leadership we must identify, invest and work with startups who are changing the world we live in. Our partnership with OurCrowd will bring us these key technologies and leaders to work together on the next generation of global challenges.”
OurCrowd is perhaps the most successful crowdfunding platform in the world having raised over $1.28 billion in capital while providing access to high quality investment opportunities to both large and smaller investors.