Markets and motivation: Test your business creativity with Edition 11 of our quiz!

This weekly quiz from YourStory tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see last week’s quiz here). In this eleventh edition of the quiz, we present five 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 themselves actually did. Would you do things differently?

Check out YourStory’s Book Review section as well, with takeaways from over 320 titles on creativity and entrepreneurship, and our weekend PhotoSparks section on creativity in the arts.

Q1: Rural consumers

Ecommerce giants and large retailers have done well focusing on the big urban markets. But many rural consumers are more cash-strapped in emerging economies and do not shop in bulk once a week. So what’s a better way to reach this market?

Q2: Not just video

Much attention understandably focuses on the richness of video for entertainment and intuitively conveying information. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) take this to another immersive level. So what is the business opportunity in audio as a medium?

Q3: WFH (work from home, watch from home)

The pandemic has forced people around the world to work, study, and entertain themselves from home. This has spurred sectors catering to high-end laptops and cybersecurity, e-learning, OTT content, and home fitness. What’s another sector that is riding the WFH wave?

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Q4: Motivation

Flexibility at work, perks, energising workspaces, regular outings, competitive salaries, and other forms of reward and recognition are touted as effective ways of workforce engagement. But some experts view these as only ‘hygiene’ factors. So what’s the best way to get truly motivated?

Q5: Workforce skilling

Technologies like IoT, analytics and machine learning have been shown to increase the productivity of white-collar workers in areas as diverse as design, customer service, retail, surgery, and stock trading. But another segment of the workforce can also be addressed with these technologies – who are these workers?

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: Rural consumers

“Companies have been focused on building a grocery model only for the Tier I cities,” explains Vidit Aatrey, Co-founder and CEO, Meesho. The startup has also developed a low-cost grocery model that lets consumers buy in small amounts, multiple times every week, instead of a monthly basket.

“This is the natural buying behaviour among the low-income segment; they get daily or weekly wages. It is one of the reasons why the one-rupee shampoo sachet works so well,” he adds. The company also leverages community leaders for logistics; it is additional income for them. Read more about this innovative startup here.

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A2: Not just video

“Audio is a powerful tool that allows you to learn and participate while multi-tasking,” explains Ankur Mittal, Co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures, who has invested in the startup Menza, an audio-focused conversational learning platform.

It engages users through high quality focussed 20-minute conversations across diverse topics. Live interactive audio is also preferred by some users for content consumption. Read more from Mentza’s founder Anurag Vaish here.

A3: WFH (work from home, watch from home)

“Homeowners have been re-evaluating their home space and have chosen to renovate their homes to accommodate new needs,” observes Ramakant Sharma, Co-founder and COO, Livspace.

The home decor startup also caters to customers who are now more open to virtual collaborations with their designers on video calls, visualising their homes in 3D, and selecting materials through ecommerce-like material listings. Read more here.

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A4: Motivation

Purpose, autonomy and mastery are the three key components of intrinsic motivation, according to Sharath Jeevan, Founder of STiR Education and Executive Chairman of Intrinsic Labs. Such intrinsic motivation needs to be awakened and nurtured to truly bring about happiness, success and alignment.

Success comes not just from grades or salary, but from building new insights, connections, and habits, Sharath explains, in his new book Intrinsic: How we can re-ignite our inner drive. See my book review here.

A5: Workforce skilling

Pradjna Intellisys is helping employers assess the talent of blue-collar workers by using a combination of IoT gear such as gloves, sensors, and software technologies. The Thiruvananthapuram-based startup, founded by Sunil Haridas and Vinod Balakrishnan, has developed a B2B HR performance management SaaS platform in this regard.

It has been used for performance improvement of blue-collar workers in areas like driver skills, safety for taxi aggregators, and ratings for manufacturing skills like welding, machining, and industrial painting. Read more about this platform for skill quality and productivity analysis 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).