Transcript

The last two years, like the rest of the world, the global financial crisis was an issue for us Israeli companies, definitely global Israeli companies. I think the fact that Israel was well prepared to this crisis made us actually more successful at the end of the day, because when your home base is prepared it makes everything much easier. A year after we actually felt that we can continue to grow and to rely on what is Israel for us. It’s not over yet, we understand that, but I think we are ready to enjoy some of the actually opportunities that this crisis brought to the world.

Opportunities in the Emerging Markets
The financial crisis actually highlighted one of the interesting things: that the emerging markets are actually the opportunity in the next decade. If the rest of the world will want to enjoy this opportunity the world will have to change its approach. It’s about developing products and services that are totally tailor-made to the emerging market. If you respect local cultures, and not just as a slogan - you can be successful.

I think Israelis and Israeli companies are like that and we’ll see more and more Israeli companies enjoying the growth of emerging markets in the next ten years.

Going Global
So international expansion it is a must. We are a small country. If we want to grow, and we want to, we are going to grow outside of Israel. I think we are ready and looking for small opportunities, which are under the radar of the multinationals and make it really an international expansion and this really became one of our growth engine. So at the moment we are operating in 13 countries and hopefully in the next ten years this part will just expand.

Coffee - A Success Story
The first opportunity we saw around the world for international expansion, as funny as it sounds, is really about coffee. What we saw is actually that roasted ground coffee is drunk differently in different countries. In one country people drink it stirred, in one country they like it from machines, in Brazil they like it in very small cups and actually we tapped into the local habits and made ourselves one of the top ten largest coffee manufacturers in the world.

What Makes us Unique
The fact that we have people from all around the world that sit together and think, whether it goes to the communication, or it goes to the computer world, or it goes to industry. Production lines, how you can make them faster, more efficient. At the end it’s just one thing: it’s the way people think here in Israel. And it’s about the education. It’s the curiosity. You don’t need to go outside of Israel to enjoy a tremendous amount of different ways of thinking. The last 10 or 20 years was about technology, but we can see now some other industries that enjoy the same way of thinking and taking it to the world.