The supermarket without a checkout counter

Tesco has invested in Trigo Vision, an Israeli startup firm developing technology for supermarkets without tills.

Tesco will integrate Trigo’s technology into its smartphone app so that its customers can buy products without using the checkout counter, allowing their payment to be processed automatically.

Trigo’s technology uses cameras installed in the ceiling of stores, allowing the items collected to be identified and automatically charged as the customers leave the store.

The size of Tesco’s investment is not known. Trigo also plans to implement its technology in 272 stores in Israel’s biggest supermarket chain Shufersal over the next five years.

Sit up straight: a chair that helps with posture

Israel-based startup Seatback has developed a way to cope with bad posture resulting from hours of sitting.

The company, founded in 2017 by physical therapist Sigal and Or Lustig — a husband and wife team — created a device which helps users correct their posture and avoid the negative effects of bad posture.

Using 70 sensors embedded into the chairs, the company’s technology sends real-time feedback to the user’s phone or computer via Bluetooth, alerting the user against slouching or asymmetrical seating, and encouraging the correction of posture.

Last month, Seatback began marketing its product to companies in Germany and the United States, focusing on car, chair and pillow manufacturers. 

Intel’s new Israel home is the smartest there is

Israel rose to 35th out of 190 countries in the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” rankings, a rise of 14 places in just a year.

The index also placed Israel highly in the the “Paying Taxes” ranking, where it leaped from 90th position to 13th, largely as a result of a sustained effort to increase digitalisation and improve services from the Israel Tax Authority.

It also rated the country favourably in its “Getting Credit”, “Registering Property” and “Starting a Business” rankings.

Mass plan to improve central Israeli city

The National Infrastructure Committee has approved an urban renewal plan in Rehovot, in central Israel, to demolish 1,400 existing homes and replaced them with 10,000 units in the country’s largest-ever “demolish and rebuild” plan.

It was approved after several years of planning and will cover a 375-acre plot that renews the Kiryat Moshe neighbourhood, an area built up in the 1950s and 1960s that is afflicted by violence and crime.

Over 55 per cent of the neighbourhood’s residents are immigrants from Ethiopia and their descendants, many of whom receive welfare assistance.

Slender salary increase

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics reported this month that the average Israeli monthly salary now stands at 11,004 shekels, or approximately £2,400, as of July.

It is a 3.4 per cent increase from July 2018, but  down slightly from June 2019.

Adjusted for inflation, the average salary was up 2.9 per cent in July 2019 compared to the previous year.

IzBiz is compiled every fortnight for the JC by Jeremy Seeff, partner at ERM, a cross-border law firm based in Tel Aviv for corporate, finance and real estate matters. Read previous editions of IzBiz here.