AI, media, health: test your business creativity with Edition 176 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 176th quiz. Ready?
Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 176th edition of the quiz, we present issues tackled by real-life entrepreneurs in their startup journeys.
What would you do if you were in their shoes? At the end of the quiz, you will find out what the entrepreneurs and innovators themselves actually did. Would you do things differently?
Check out YourStory’s Book Review section as well, with takeaways from over 355 titles on creativity and entrepreneurship, and our weekend PhotoSparks section on creativity in the arts.
Q1: Digital media and comics
Comics constitute a growing industry as well as community of creators, educators and entertainers. How can digital media help expand new markets here?
Q2: Food preservation
Post-harvest losses remained a major issue for many farmers. Some existing solutions do not scale well, or are unable to prevent fungal infection. How can this challenge be resolved?
Q3: Pain alleviation
An estimated 270 million people suffer from chronic pain in India. Demand for comprehensive pain management solutions is growing, but treatment options are fragmented. How can this problem be addressed?
Q4: Building management
Buildings need to be managed in such a way that utilisation of water and energy is efficient. How can digital technology help here?
Q5: Hiring talent
Startups face challenges in attracting the right talent at different stages of their journey, and traditional recruitment agencies often charge hefty fees without guaranteeing results. How can this hiring problem be tackled?
Answers!
Congratulations on having come this far! But there’s more to come – answers to these five questions (below), as well as links to articles with more details on the entrepreneurs’ solutions. Happy reading, happy learning – and happy creating!
A1: Digital media and comics
Webtoon app Toonsutra caters to a range of Indian audiences with offerings in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages, as well as partnerships with global publishers. “With over two million downloads and growing, Toonsutra has shown that Indian audiences are ready to embrace a new era of digital fandom and storytelling,” says Toonsutra Co-Founder and Chairman, Sharad Devarajan.
“Toonsutra represents an exciting confluence of digital innovation and cultural resonance in one of the world's most dynamic markets,” says Filmon Zerai, COO of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which invested in Toonsutra. Read more here about how digital comics are redefining local and global pop culture, and the Comic Con India series of events in eight cities.
A2: Food preservation
Founded in 2022 by Monika Tiwari, Khetar is an agritech startup that uses solar dehydration to preserve agricultural produce and increase their shelf life. It enables produce to be further processed, packaged, and sold to food processing companies or exporters.
It has developed hybrid energy solutions to dehydrate a range of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Read more about here about how its operations will expand from Rajasthan to Maharashtra and Uttarakhand, with dehydration capability to process chikku, strawberry, onion, and tomato.
A3: Pain alleviation
Founded by Nivesh Khandelwal and Vishwas Singh, Nivaan Care is a multidisciplinary chronic pain management clinic chain. It recently raised funding to expand to 10 new clinics across two cities and introduce new regenerative medicine treatments.
The company focuses on non-surgical, evidence-based solutions using a multidisciplinary model that combines medical, psychological, and rehabilitative care. Read more here about how it has treated over 10,000 patients, performing 1,400 minimally invasive procedures.
A4: Building management
Founded by Deepinder Singh and Pankaj Chawla, 75F develops and manufactures IoT-based building management systems for data-driven facilities intelligence. It has over 1,800 installations across nine countries, leveraging IoT, cloud computing, and machine learning.
“We're proving that sophisticated energy management can be both powerful and user-friendly,” says Deepinder Singh, Founder and CEO of 75F. Read more here about its energy efficiency solutions, and its recent fundraise of $45 million from Accurant International's Net Zero Alliance.
A5: Hiring talent
Founded by Deepak Subramanian, Shravan Kumar and Varun Gopalakrishnan, YourTribe helps startups hire top talent by combining the power of AI with employer branding. It was recently featured on Startup Singam, the first startup reality show in Tamil Nadu's mainstream TV focusing on startup and MSME investments and growth.
Instead of charging high commission fees per hire, the Chennai-based startup has a Recruitment-as-a-Service (RaaS) model where startups pay a fixed fee for access to high-quality hiring services. Read more here about how it has facilitated over 400 hires for startups across more than 75 different companies, and its recent securing of Rs 4 crore in funding.
YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).
