Urvashi Verma

The arrival of Amazon Go has shoppers saying goodbye to long checkout lines and retailers saying hello to the idea of completely cashier-less systems. This, for Israeli entrepreneurs like Yair Cleper, CEO and founder of Supersmart, is a huge boon. Last month, Amazon. the American e-commerce behemoth, introduced a new kind of store, Amazon Go, in which no checkout is required. Customers simply walk out with their items and are charged automatically as they exit. Israel-based SuperSmart has crea

Amid the chaos created by the vicious pandemic that engulfed New York City and the rest of the modern world, a Indian sweet-shop in Jackson Heights found a way to serve thousands of healthcare and essential workers. Rajbhog Foods donated more than 14 tons of food, nearly 27,000 thousand pounds in meals to healthcare and essential workers during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our businesses and employees are all located in the New York & New Jersey area. We were in the epicenter of everyth

Huawei Technologies’ new Mate 30 5G smartphone series will be released today, but the new devices won’t come with YouTube, Gmail or Google Maps. The new devices may be the first round in the mounting trade war between the U.S. and China playing out on the frontlines of smartphone technology. And for the first time consumers outside the US and China will have to choose between better designed Chinese smartphone and Google’s operating software. Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equi

After rebranding as The We Company, the largest co-working provider in the United States is introducing membership-free co-working spaces in retail areas. The We Company’s latest endeavor is to maximize the use of flex space in Manhattan’s Flatiron District combining co-working spaces with retail by offering food, apparel, and stationery made by its member companies’ products. The We Company describes its newest offering as a new town square center where people can come together to work, gr

Second-tier cities with higher-than-average urban population growth are becoming fertile and viable areas for future commercial real estate investment. Often seen as an alternative to investment in the “big six” real estate markets–Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. — most of which are often dubbed 24-hour cities, 18-hour cities are being propelled by faster than average growth. According to a recent report by PwC and the Urban Land Institute,

Large, vacant retail spaces are being transformed into vibrant workplace campuses by big tech companies—and it seems this trend is just beginning. Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has signed a 14-year lease with Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. and Macerich to relocate its office to Los Angeles’ Westside Pavilion Mall where it plans to develop a more than half a million-square-foot campus. Similarly, WeWork which recently purchased Lord & Taylor’s former flagship store location in

Siemens’ fast-paced acquisitions of J2, Enlighted and Comfy this year portend the company’s keen interest in maintaining a foothold in the coveted smart building sector in coming years. In a one-on-one discussion with the President of Siemens’ Building Technologies division – Americas, Dave Hopping talked about the company’s vision and strategy for the smart building marketplace. Hopping, who leads operational and commercial activities for Siemens’ broad portfolio of products and services in bu

WeWork, the largest occupier of office space in Manhattan, has continued to rapidly expand in the enterprise market through innovative product offerings like Powered by We (PxWe), its office space “as-a-service” offering. Now, the company’s white-label product is being led by a commercial real estate corporate services veteran, Craig Robinson, Powered by We’s global head of Enterprise Services, who spoke briefly about his new role and innovation in the Proptech sector at CREtech’s Chicago event

In recent months a host of factors such as regulatory uncertainties, lack of oversight, custodial issues, and cyber hacks have been cited as causes of Bitcoin’s precipitous downfall. While these factors do impact the price fluctuations of the cryptocurrency, economists say Bitcoin’s higher volatility compared to fiat currencies or stocks is caused by a characteristic known as the “network effect.” The network effect is central to understanding Bitcoin’s valuation because it and other digital c

Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station is one of Asia’s biggest traffic hubs in terms of passenger load, and a showcase for China’s railway system. It handles more than 60 million passengers every year, with more than 330,000 people passing through each day dur

An Israeli startup, Guardian Optical Technologies, has developed a car sensor that it says is capable of saving lives of infants accidentally left in cars by detecting the smallest heartbeat. In the US a child dies from vehicular heatstroke every ten days, often because a parent or caregiver forgets that there is a child in the backseat. “Tragedies like these are preventable. Guardian is dedicated to protecting drivers and passengers, so incidents when infants and children are left in hot cars

Apple’s Big Eight Time of Ride the Wave More than one billion, nearly one for every eight people in the world today. That is how many iPhones Apple Inc. has sold in the past 10 years. Despite these gargantuan numbers, investors remain confident Apple’s smartphone market has not yet reached its saturation point and expect the company's stock price to post strong gains well into next year. “The iPhone 8 will have the greatest impact on Apple’s bottom line in the near future. It’s a huge revenue