Open-source AI, marketing, health: test your business creativity with Edition 173 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 173rd 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 173rd 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: Open-source AI
Many enterprises are adopting open-source AI models, but face challenges in integration, optimisation, and deployment. How can these challenges be tackled?
Q2: Missing children
Many families face anguish when their children disappear. How can technology help locate such missing children and reunite them with their families?
Q3: Girls’ health and education
In many remote and financially-strapped schools, fewer girls complete their education due to a lack of proper facilities when they menstruate. There is also stigma and silence around this topic. How can these problems be solved?
Q4: Safe foods
Many children are sensitive and even allergic to artificial ingredients used in bakery products. How can their health issues be addressed in a viable manner?
Q5: Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has a significant portion of the marketing budgets of brands, but there are challenges in detecting fake followers, managing campaigns efficiently, and ensuring clear RoI. How can these issues be solved?
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: Open-source AI
“2025 marks the year when GenAI transitions into production, and engineering teams are witnessing the benefits of using open-source models in-house,” says Arko Chattopadhyay, Co-founder of Pipeshift. The AI infrastructure startup has raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by Y Combinator and SenseAI Ventures.
Its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model enables engineering teams to orchestrate AI workloads across any infrastructure by simplifying deployment and maximising production throughput. Read more here about how Pipeshift has worked with more than 30 companies, including NetApp.
A2: Missing children
An estimated 96,000 children go missing in India every year. By leveraging the power of AI in image generation and recognition, platforms like Khoji.in enable families, police and NGOs to trace missing children.
Founded by father-son duo Abhishek Gupta and Dhruv Gupta, Khoji.in has partnered with DigiLocker for quick identity verification using face age progression technology. Read more here about how orphanages and relief organisations can help trace families of children using this AI technology.
A3: Girls’ health and education
Priyanshi Bagga, a 17-year-old student at Shiv Nadar School, founded Chuppi Todoh ('Breaking the Silence’) to tackle issues around menstruation. She conducted bake sales, launched crowdfunding efforts, and roped in a partner to install menstrual pad dispensers in government schools.
Her team also approached self-help groups in villages and raised funds through a micro-financing network to keep the dispenser machines up and running. Read more here about how Chuppi Todoh has successfully improved the lives of over 10,000 girls, and how Bagga was awarded the GirlUp Project Award from the United Nations.
A4: Safe foods
Dhara Panchal founded Nitzana (‘blooming flower’) as a bakery brand using natural, wholesome ingredients. Its cakes, cookies, and granola stand out for their commitment to avoiding refined sugar, refined flour, eggs, and artificial colours.
“Our strawberry cakes use fresh strawberries and pulp instead of artificial flavourings or canned fruit,” Panchal says. Read more here about how it is expanding beyond Vadodara, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Delhi.
A5: Influencer marketing
Founded by Krishna Priya Akella and Aravindha Bollineni, Starbuzz.ai uses AI to simplify and enhance the influencer marketing process for brands. It automates many aspects of influencer collaboration, making it easier for marketers to discover, manage, and analyse their partnerships.
It claims that the automation tools reduce manual tasks by up to 50% and enable data-driven decisions that were not possible before. Read more here about its subscription model starting at Rs 25,000 for three months, and its client list of Yamaha, Vega Beauty, Bajaj Electronics, Mercedes Benz, and Meta.
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).