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Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 74th 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: IoT in manufacturing

IoT and analytics are key capabilities in taking the traditional manufacturing sector to higher levels of productivity and innovation. Visibility and visualisation improve, thereby enabling better utilisation of resources. What are some other impacts of IoT in manufacturing?

Q2: Mobility and electric vehicles

Safety, performance and design are important product features for electric vehicle manufacturers if they want to create new markets. EV financing and progressive legislation also help. But what else is required to accelerate this industry?

Q3: Tech and diversity

Having employee diversity is good for businesses with respect to effective workforces and better market understanding. AI and ML add a new twist to the traditional workforce. How does this affect gender equations?

Q4: Smart cold chains

A tech-driven cold chain offers significant benefits to the traditional food industry. It also benefits cloud kitchens. Such solutions help manage temperature-sensitive products like dairy and meat. Which specific technologies come into play here, and what impacts would they have?

Q5: Data security

Data protection is a major priority for companies as their data footprint increases—particularly in the context of high business velocity and a broad range of customer and machine data. How can automation and AI help improve data security in such a context, where manual resources face serious constraints?

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: IoT in manufacturing

“IoT in the connected supply chain at the asset level helps companies to control and manage inventory positions. Additionally, they get greater visibility into actual inventory throughout the complex logistics network,” explains Siddhant Bery, Managing Partner at KSP Inc.

“IoT-enabled sensors can monitor equipment usage and health, which helps assess performance. Further, the sensors can help deploy the service if there are any problems,” he adds. Read more here about how IoT can also help improve vehicle performance and employee safety.

A2: Mobility and electric vehicles

“A robust charging infrastructure is one of the major drivers in accelerating faster adoption of electric vehicles,” says Ravneet Phokela, Chief Business Officer, Ather Energy.

About 60% of the company’s installations are in India’s Tier II and Tier III cities. It has also installed grids across cities to enable intercity rides. Read more here about Ather’s presence in 80 cities with over 100 experience centres.

A3: Tech and diversity

“As automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) become more commonplace and knowledge-based professions become more in demand, they open up several options for women in manufacturing. Automation and AI in manufacturing are displacing many physically demanding task-based occupations off the factory floor,” observes Maheshwari Dhayanandan, Vice President, Product and Manufacturing Quality, at e-con Systems.

“Growth of automation in this sector necessitates the need of creative thoughts, and due to their ability to offer fresh, innovative insights, and potential to more successfully solve operational challenges, women can flourish in this area,” she adds. Read more here about women’s contributions to the manufacturing sector here.

A4: Smart cold chains

“Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) offer end-to-end visibility and facilitate predictive analysis for every cold chain function. Integrating them into your inventory control system helps keep track of stock at all times,” explains Swarup Bose, Founder and CEO of Celcius.

“Managers can also account for occurrences, such as harsh weather conditions, and find alternative procurement options to ensure they don’t hamper the quality of the raw material or pay extra for procurement,” he adds. Read more here about how AI and ML-based sensors can track vehicle maintenance records and predict potential malfunctions.

A5: Data security

“Successful automation can eliminate backup failures, which is increasingly important as IT teams everywhere are under resource pressure,” Preethi Srinivasan, Director of Innovation at Druva emphasises.

“AI and ML analytics in cybersecurity can proactively support the cybersecurity posture of the entire organisation, bringing about a radical simplification of operations as well as increased security and cost savings,” she adds. Read more bout AI powering data protection here.

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).