About The Guest

Uptin Saiidi is a journalist and coach based between Dubai and Los Angeles. Today, he makes videos for YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram about Tech, Money & Cultures to his combined audience of 325,000 people.

He’s reported for MTV News in New York and CNBC International across the U.S, Europe and Asia, primarily covering business, tech, and more. He’s lived and worked in New York, Singapore and Hong Kong, reporting across live television and digital platforms. Uptin has interviewed hundreds of executives and experts across various platforms, including television, CNBC.com and for digital videos, including Gary Vaynerchick, Bill Nye, and Binance’s CEO Chanpeng Zhao to name a few. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uptin/ 

Twitter: @uptin

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/uptin

About The Episode

One of the things that the pandemic and specifically the lockdowns has changed significantly is the way we shop. There has been nearly a 40% increase in e-commerce over the last year. Coupled with this is the need to social distance when shopping. However, before covid brought on these changes, there was already an effort to change the way we shopped into a more automated experience. My guest this week, Uptin Saiidi, comes on to talk about the future of retail and grocery shopping as being realised through Amazon’s cashierless Go, and sophisticated Fresh stores. We will also discuss how in China, Alibaba’s Hema store had already implemented similar technology, enabling a more informed consumer and efficient shopping experience. We also discuss the data privacy implications of the tracking technologies used in the stores, and of course what job and social impacts will be realised by these initiatives.

Uptin gives us his personal view on these stores of the future, and I think offers an important perspective because he actually visited and used each of them firsthand. So if you’ve ever been curious about how automation technologies will impact the future of shopping this episode is for you. 

Uptin also has videos dedicated to these 3 stores if you want a more detailed explanation of each: 

Amazon Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6XmszZChOY&ab_channel=Uptin

Amazon Fresh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyr4vgJ0gH4&ab_channel=Uptin

Alibaba Hema: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDIvWdwVZMg&ab_channel=CNBCInternational