A few years ago, Alisa Givertz, an Israeli materials engineer and serial entrepreneur, found herself in a high-end New York hotel with her five-year-old daughter. At some point, the child went missing.
“I thought it would not be a problem with all the cameras and security personnel employed by the hotel, but I was wrong,” Givertz said.
The entrepreneur shared the anecdote as she presented her startup, Liquid 360, during the 2024 Next-Gen Women’s Entrepreneurship Award at The Jerusalem Post’s Women Leaders Summit, which took place at the Google for Startup Campus in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
The award powered by The Luzzatto Group, featured five female founders presenting their startups before a panel of three judges: Dr. Esther Luzzatto, CEO at The Luzzatto Group and chairwoman of the Council for the Advancement of Women in Science and Technology; Tamar Luzzatto, co-CEO and head of business development, marketing, and innovation at The Luzzatto Group, and Dr. Gili Bittan-Banin, head of innovation at Bazan Group.“We are privileged to host this competition for the third year,” said Tamar Luzzatto.
“However, this year, we are holding this event in a completely different atmosphere,” she added, remembering how, in 2023, several attorneys from the firm were sitting in the audience, including Amit Soussana.
Soussana was one of the Israeli hostages taken to Gaza and freed at the end of November. Luzzatto paid tribute to her courage.
“On behalf of all the members of our group, I want to say that we stand with you and with all the hostages,” Luzzatto said. “Our award tonight is dedicated to Amit, who we hope will be with us again next year.”
Liquid 360, Givertz continued, offers technological solutions to make companies’ sites more prepared and secure. Givertz explained that while she was lucky to find her daughter just before she left the hotel’s premises, in many other instances, due to security issues, many disasters that could have been prevented – were not.
“Liquid 360 uses existing security equipment to enable a real-life 3D picture that the operator can understand effortlessly,” Givertz explained.
Adi Paz, founder and CEO of Ontime, was also inspired by a personal experience. “I live in the Galilee, and while the area is beautiful when it comes to commercial venues, it has nothing to offer,” she said during her presentation. “Driving to a pharmacy takes me thirty minutes, and there is no food delivery service.”
Paz highlighted that about 3.4 billion people worldwide have no access to same or next-day delivery. Ontime is a provider of community-driven logistics.
“We enable people to cooperate, providing delivery and mobility services driven by social incentive and not financial gain,” Paz said. The company was recently selected as one of the top 50 mobility startups in Europe. The competition also featured two startups in the healthcare field.
Dr. Hadas Ziso, CEO of EndoCure, discussed the challenges of diagnosing endometriosis, a disease affecting 10% of reproductive-age women.
“The disease causes chronic, debilitating pain and infertility, and it takes up to 11 years to be diagnosed,” she noted. “The disease is caused by very small lesions, one millimeter in size – invisible in any imaging modality. Therefore, the patients often get a false negative answer.”
EndoCure uses robotics and AI to produce objective imaging with 100 times higher resolution than a regular MRI.“We can detect one-millimeter lesions with contrast-enhanced images,” Ziso said. “In addition, our AI algorithm helps us locate these very small lesions, which is like finding a needle in a haystack.”
Emris Pharma has developed a solution to prevent and treat skin toxicities associated with targeted therapies for cancer treatment, the company’s CEO, Dr. Lyora Aharonov, explained.
“Skin toxicities affect up to 90% of patients receiving cancer treatment,” she said. “Our technology is a real game changer solution for these patients.”
“Our company is not even a year old, but we’re already developing dedicated formulations that deliver all drugs directly to their target,” she added. “With funding, we could be treating patients in Israel by the end of 2025.”
The fifth company that presented during the evening aims to solve one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century: how to feed the planet’s growing human population without completely depleting its resources.
“We decided to deep-dive into one of the most unknown research areas in the kingdom of life: fungi,” said Dr. Jasmin Ravid, CEO of Kinoko Tech. “These amazing, hidden, mysterious organisms have so much to contribute to this mission.”
Kinoko is working on growing the next generation of superfoods using fungi and a unique deep-tech fermentation technology to produce sustainable, delicious, and highly nutritional food.
Ravid explained that the company already has an important commercial agreement in Israel and is in negotiations with several partners in Europe.
“Our goal is to see thousands of families around the world gather around the dinner table and eat healthier and more sustainable food by the end of this year.”
At the end of the evening, Liquid 360 was selected as the 2024 Next-Gen Women’s Entrepreneurship Award winner.
Learn more about the Women Leaders Summit.