NTT DATA Names Binah.ai Winner of 10th Open Innovation Contest

Tokyo, January 29, 2020 – NTT DATA, a leading IT services provider, announced today that it has awarded Tel Aviv, Israel-based Binah.ai as the Open Innovation Contest 10 champion for a solution that measures overall health and wellness simply by using a smartphone video to analyze a person's cheek, generating vital-sign extractions that insurance, telemedicine or healthcare service providers can use to conduct examinations and provide support remotely. The winning proposal was chosen during the contest's Grand Finale event at NTT DATA headquarters in Tokyo on January 24. NTT DATA will now collaborate with Binah.ai to develop a concrete business plan for the solution.

NTT DATA's annual competition invites high-tech startups to submit proposals for overcoming issues in global society. The proposals are judged by a panel comprising NTT DATA personnel and outside experts. NTT DATA received more than 400 innovative proposals from around the world starting last July. Regional contests were held in 16 cities (14 countries) on four continents between July 2019 and December 2019. Each regional contest selected one or two companies to present at the Grand Finale in Tokyo. The final proposals covered eight categories: Healthcare & Life Sciences, Finance/Insurance & Payments, Automotive & MaaS, Telecom & IoT, Physical Stores & Marketing, Smart Automation, Data Logistics, and Disruptive Social Innovation.

Additional awards were handed out, including the SDGs Spotlight Winner award to Wingcopter (Munich), the Domain Award (Healthcare & Life Sciences) to Binah.ai (Tel Aviv), the Domain Award (Finance, Insurance & Payments) to Nauphilus (Mexico city) and Digital Fineprint (London), the Domain Award (Automotive & MaaS) to Dorabot (Shenzhen), the Domain Award (Telecom & IoT) to Iotic (London), the Domain Award (Physical Stores and Marketing) to Anagog (Tel Aviv), the Domain Award (Disruptive Social Innovation) to IGOODI (Milan), and the Zamma Award to Edgewise Networks (Boston), CPC Analytics (Bangalore), MDOTM (Milan), and Anomalous (Edinburgh).

David Maman, founder and CEO of Binah.ai, said: "This is a great honor. NTT DATA is one of the biggest system integrators and is trusted by very large customers, so we hope to expand our market quickly and efficiently. From the start, NTT DATA has been very focused on building a collaborative business and using our technology to develop new business opportunities. We look forward to creating great products for our customers."

Kotaro Zamma, Head of NTT DATA's Open Innovation and Business Incubation, said: "We look forward to collaborating with Binah.ai to co-create an innovative new business. Our annual contest demonstrates that innovation is progressing everywhere, from advanced countries to emerging countries. Issues vary greatly from one region to the next, so different startups using the same technology can come up with very different solutions. We believe that solutions created by startups can create new, world-changing value."

NTT DATA's Open Innovation Contest creates opportunities for new business creation. As a result of last year's contest, for example, NTT DATA has collaborated with 2019 winner CloudPick from China to develop a cashless store solution that is expected to be introduced by some 1,000 retailers by 2022. This year, regional contests were held by NTT DATA group companies in 12 cities and headquarters organized an additional three contests in Tel Aviv, Tallinn and Shenzhen, hubs for emerging technologies and businesses.

Going forward, the annual Open Innovation Contest will continue to be held in venues worldwide as a winning proposition for startups, NTT DATA and its enterprise clients, and global society.