Who is Joshua Levinberg?

Joshua Levinberg, entrepreneur and businessman, is a graduate of Tel Aviv University in Israel. After receiving a B.Sc. in electrical engineering and electronics, he succeeded in investing in and establishing a number of high-tech companies in Israel that have gained market presence throughout the world.

He is currently Senior Advisor for Business Development and Corporate Strategy at Gilat Satellite Networks, a company that he co-founded in 1987. Starting out as the company’s Vice President of Marketing and Business Development he moved to the US in 1989 where he set up a subsidiary of Gilat Satellite Networks Inc. He served as Gilat Inc.’s Ex-ecutive General Manager and Vice President and took over the position of Senior Vice President of Business Development in 1994, remaining there until 2003. Since 2005 he has been responsible for Corporate Business Development and Strategy.

Path to Success

Gilat Satellite Networks has been a publicly traded company since 1993, known as NASDAQ:GILT. The company is a leader in the international market of production and supply of satellite based communications networks. The company’s very small aperture terminals and other products and solutions related to VSAT equipment, are marketed worldwide to clients spread out through six continents.

In September 2010, Joshua Levinberg was interviewed for satellitemarket.com regarding upcoming trends in the field and Gilat's position in the international satellite arena. As one of the four global players in the field of satellite communications, Gilat is also in the forefront of new technology that will be integrated into global military communications systems. Thanks to Gilat's strong presence in several different geographic regions, the company is well situated to interact with the military and corporate needs of the countries present directly.

Products designed and created at Gilat include earth-based terminals that both transmit and receive Internet, data, voice, broadband and video via satellite. Gilat typically interacts with communications service providers that require VSATs for their customers, but in some cases, including Latin America and the United States, Gilat is in direct contact with end users and acts as a service provider via it’s subsidiaries. One of the subsidiaries of Gilat Satellite Networks is Spacenet Inc.

Tel Aviv University hosted the MIT Enterprise Forum in June 2010 and Joshua Levinberg, as one of the speakers, explained Gilat's involvement in the telecommunications market in Brazil. As the largest Latin American country, Brazil holds excellent opportunities for investment and expansion. One of Gilat's projects is GESAC, which helps connect the public, focusing on children, to the Internet.

Joshua Levinberg’s entrepreneurial spirit also led him to join in the establishment and invest-ment phases of other successful firms. One of those, Global Village Telecom (GVT), was founded in 1997. He served as its first CEO and later, in 2009, Vivendi spent more than $4 billion to buy the company. Joshua Levinberg was also co-founder of Satlynx and served as its first Chairman of the Board. After being acquired by GE, Satlynx is now referred to as GE-Satcom.

The Israel business financial newspaper, Globes, recently wrote about Joshua Levinberg's participation in the Mergermarket M&A in Israel Conference. He spoke at the conference regarding raising capital for high tech startups that want to be recognized globally. Through his own experience, he related the common avenue for raising capital is the NASDAQ, but also emphasized the importance of M&A to aggressively growing a startup into an international company.

Additional Business Ventures

In 2003 Joshua co-established, together with Amiram Levinberg, an investment company, JAL Ventures Ltd., which enables him to invest in successful companies such as Ka-samba, Agropeace, DenTack, Erayo.com, Kargal, GoNetworks, Matan Digital Printers and Xsight Systems to name a few.

Joshua Levinberg’s involvement in Kasamba, an online advice service, was as a lead in-vestor and member of the board. In 2007 LivePerson (NASDQ-LPSN) acquired Kasamba for $40 million. With the merger of the two companies, the team of online experts contin-ues to offer reliable and accurate advice through its basket of services, including the ability to chat live with experts.

Levinberg also founded and currently serves as Chairman of Agropeace Bio Ltd, which is a privately held company in Israel. Agropeace Bio Ltd, develop projects connected to the bio diesel market in Africa. The company’s projects involve growing castor in Africa, re-moving the seeds and using them to extract oil to be used in the bio diesel market.