Retail Innovators Create Landscape For Promising Israeli Tech Startups

Four organizations dedicated to retail innovation — The Shelf, Nielsen Innovate, JVP Play and Deloitte — have collaborated to create the Israeli RetailTech Landscape, mapping out 100 promising Israeli startups within the retail technology space. By grouping these companies, the landscape is designed to highlight the significant contribution that Israeli startups are making to the global commerce market.

Together, the companies have raised more than $880 million, an average of $9 million per company. In fact, 19 of the companies have raised more than $20 million each, including some mega-rounds raised by companies such as Trax or Yotpo (both have raised more than $100 million).

Another 20 startups, such as Syte and CommonSense Robotics, have received investments of between $5 million and $20 million, and 61 of the featured companies have raised $100,000 to $5 million.

Several Israeli retailers and platform providers have had significant success in recent years, and were later acquired by major global companies. These companies include:

Retalix, a software application acquired by NCR for $650 million;
R2Net, the parent company of James Allen, acquired by Signet Jewelers for $328 million;
Cimagine, an augmented reality platform acquired by Snap for approximately $40 million; and
Visualead, a visual QR code generator acquired by Alibaba.

“Israel is rapidly becoming one of the leading hubs when it comes to retail innovation,” said Ilan Leiferman, Managing Partner of The Shelf, The Israeli RetailTech Hub. “Leaders from Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour, H&M and Best Buy have been visiting Israel in the last two years and are collaborating with several Israeli startups. We predict that this trend will continue and global retailers will establish innovation activities in Israel in the form of partnerships, investments or acquisitions.”

The landscape is divided into 14 categories: