AI, safety, empowerment: test your business creativity with Edition 189 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 189th 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 189th 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: Proper fitting
Many ecommerce customers face challenges in getting clothes of the right size and have to return purchased items to the retailers. How can a better fit be enabled so that such inconveniences and inefficiencies are reduced?
Q2: Clothing and dignity
Many people with disabilities struggle to wear clothes that are designed for the mass market. They often have to resort to custom tailoring, or need assistance while getting dressed. How can this problem be tackled?
Q3: Eyeglass design
For many people, wearing eyeglasses can be stigmatising and embarrassing. Others may find it boring and not trendy. How can this product and experience be enhanced?
Q4: Dog safety
Many stray dogs get hit at night due to poor visibility. Pet dogs often go missing as well. How can these challenges faced by our canine friends be reduced?
Q5: Babies and parents
Parents reportedly lose 700 hours of sleep during the first two years of their baby’s life. How can sleep deprivation for parents as well as regular sleeping patterns for babies be enabled?
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: Proper fitting
Founded by Deekshana Reddy, The Body Match (TBM) is an online shopping platform that provides a personalised experience to buyers by customising clothing to different body shapes. It uses digital trial rooms with AI and 3D modelling to help customers see how a particular clothing item will look on them.
“With 1.3 lakh people so far, we hope to increase it to 10 lakh folks—all within the next three months,” Reddy says. Read more here about how this service is available via platforms like Myntra, Flipkart, Ajio, Clovia, and Shyaway.
A2: Clothing and dignity
Founded by Avishi Gupta, Umang Bansal, and Ananya Goel, Project Riayat was launched with the belief that fashion should not only be functional but empowering. Clothing should be not just about comfort but also autonomy, and should thus be adaptive.
Examples include designing garments with side zippers for people with prosthetics, and pants for wheelchair users that can be worn without needing to stand. Read more here about Project Riayat’s journey of empathy and creativity, and how it has supporters like Oncocare, a cancer care initiative.
A3: Eyeglass design
Created by high school student Ariana Singhi, SWAPS are customisable, interchangeable sleeves that transform eyewear into fashion statements. The attachments are secure enough for daily wear, easily changeable, safe for children, and appealing to adults.
The product line is now available through Lenskart, a major eyewear retailer, with dozens of designs priced from Rs 500 upward. Read more here about how the designs include licensed patterns featuring catchphrases from popular TV shows.
A4: Dog safety
Rimjhim Joshi Shende has developed Pawsitivity, a QR-enabled reflective collar for dogs that can save them from risk and displacement. Such reflective collars make stray dogs more visible at night, and thus less likely to be hit by moving vehicles.
The QR codes store the dog’s location, medical history, and caretaker details, thus enabling them to be easily traced if they are lost. Read more here about how the Pawsitivity collars are available on its own website and on Amazon, and how it has sold over two million collars so far.
A5: Babies and parents
Founded by Radhika Patil and Bharath Patil, Cradlewise designs smart cribs that tackle a universal parental challenge—sleep deprivation. It has developed a crib and bassinet that uses AI technology to detect early wake-ups and gently soothe babies back to sleep before they cry.
The cribs are available at Cradlewise.com are shipped within seven days in a number of markets. Read more here about how it has collected sleep pattern data to create an adaptive solution for babies, and how it has set up operations in the US, Canada and India.
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).