Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 122nd 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.
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Q1: AI assistants
AI assistants such as Grammarly can help in drafting essays or email messages. Such assistants combine analytics with predictive recommendations. How can such capabilities help programmers?
Q2: Farmer support
Farming can be a high-risk occupation, and there are even unfortunate instances of farmer suicides due to huge debts and crop failure. How can farmers access educational resources that can improve cropping patterns and secure their livelihoods?
Q3: Stationery products
The stationery market in many countries is largely unorganised. Categories like diaries are quite crowded. If you are a design-entrepreneur, how would you break into this market?
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Q4: Sustainable footwear
An estimated 350 million pairs of shoes are discarded worldwide each year, contributing to landfill and ocean pollution. How can sustainable practices be introduced within the footwear industry?
Q5: Women entrepreneurship
Many women are passionate about trying new things and learning new skills, but lack the right opportunities to pursue these passions into successful businesses. How can educational and livelihood opportunities be provided here at scale?
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: AI assistants
Ayush Singhal founded CodeMate in 2022 as a tool that would upgrade code as created by the developer. “CodeMate is an auto-correcting developer tool that fixes coding errors as you type,” he explains.
It helps fix syntax errors and run-time errors, as well as warn about performance issues. “Through CodeMate, organisations can save up to 40% on their project cost and 35-50% in their project time,” Singhal claims. Read more about his journey here.
A2: Farmer support
Sai Gole and Siddharth Dialani launched BharatAgri in 2017 as a farming technology platform for crop advisory services to maximise production and income. It offers agronomy and health resources on 350 crops from sowing till harvesting, with real-time crop protection updates.
Most of the user come from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, and the online services are in Marathi, Hindi and English. Read more here about how five million farmers have been registered by the startup, which has raised funding from Arkam Ventures, Capria Ventures, and Omnivore.
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A3: Stationery products
Factor Notes, a stationery brand from Kochi started by Nasaf S and Sachin S, capitalises on the rising preference for journals and personalised planners. It is active in the markets of India, UAE and Africa.
The business reports a multi-crore revenue with a presence across 4,500 stores and a customer base of three million. Read more here about the team of designers who focus on the international market for quirky stationery with a premium look and feel.
A4: Sustainable footwear
Reroute was founded by Gujarati siblings Parth and Karishma Dalal in 2023 as a venture that combines technology, sustainability, and social responsibility in the footwear sector. It uses sugarcane residue and recycled plastic water bottles to manufacture eco-friendly shoes.
“Our approach involved not only reducing waste, such as sugarcane residue and plastic bottles, but also giving a second life to this waste,” Parth explains. Read more here about how the idea for this startup was triggered by a conversation about the prevalent culture of discarding shoes after minimal use among affluent families in Gujarat.
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A5: Women entrepreneurship
The Alippo platform, headed by Ayushi Sinha and Sukriti Soni, helps women learn different skills and then start a business of their own. The platform offers courses in baking, cooking, product formulation, makeup, and much more.
“We started as an edtech platform but soon evolved into a full-fledged growth engine for solopreneurs to launch and run their businesses,” Ayushi adds. Read more here about how Alippo has trained 1.5 lakh women in different categories, out of which 1,300 have already started home-based businesses.
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).
