AI, investment, crafts: test your business creativity with Edition 221 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 221st 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 221st 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: Tech leadership
Many entrepreneurs who have a deep understanding of their market often lack the technical expertise to translate vision into code. How can this gap be bridged without a full-time executive hire?
Q2: International investors
Despite rising demand, the tools to make overseas investing truly accessible simply do not exist for investors in many countries. How can this challenge be tackled?
Q3: Artisan markets
India’s art and craft sector supports millions of artisans, but many struggle with irregular work, unfair pricing, low income, and limited access to markets. How can these challenges be solved?
Q4: Food, quality, scale
The food business can be lucrative and attractive, but ‘foodpreneurs’ need to pay attention to quality and financial sustainability. How can this be ensured for business success?
Q5: From data to decisions
Many business teams have access to data but cannot translate it into timely action. They are also unable to leverage data to anticipate what may happen next. Where is the entrepreneurial opportunity here?
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: Tech leadership
Founded by Shrihari Shastry, Ankit Anand, and Sonali Parate, Profound offers fractional CTO consulting and technical due diligence for investors. They create technology roadmaps aligned with business goals, design scalable architectures, and build and manage engineering teams.
The startup, which now has 25 clients, also offers contract-based, minimum viable product (MVP) development. Read more here about its technical due diligence for investors that covers code quality, scalability of the tech stack, and the architecture's ability to handle increased load.
A2: International investors
Founded by Nitish Sahni and Sparsh Sharma, Paasa is a digital wealth management platform to remove paperwork, simplify compliance, and offer Indians a single window to invest in global markets. They can remit funds (in dollars) via their local banks and transfer funds to US partner Interactive Brokers’ account.
Paasa automates cross-border tax filing and compliance, two of the biggest friction points that discourage Indian investors from investing overseas. Read more here about how such a platform gives access to major global exchanges such as NASDAQ and NYSE, along with markets in London and Switzerland.
A3: Artisan markets
Many organisations are trying to bring visibility and sustainability to artisans. Founded by Priya Krishnamoorthy, 200 Million Artisans addresses the mismatch between traditional craft cycles and modern financing expectations.
Megha Phansalkar founded Tisser Artisan Trust to support artisan clusters through long-term engagement rather than project-based interventions. Read more here about the work of Vishpala Naik (Ekibeki), Noopur Kumari and Nilesh Priyadarshi (Kaarigar Clinic), Karthik Vaidyanathan (Varnam Craft Collective), Project Tarasha, and MeMeraki.
A4: Food, quality, scale
“We’re here to deliver a California burrito, like what you get in California,” explains Bert Mueller, founder of India’s largest Mexican food chain, California Burrito. “Ingredients are the essence of the food. If you can’t get them, you have to grow them,” he adds.
Early mistakes in the first five years were trying to open too many stores too quickly. “Also, we didn’t invest anything in marketing, which was not a great idea,” he adds. Read more about Mueller’s business success tips here.
A5: From data to decisions
Founded by Vipul Prakash, FireAI targets the growing gap between data availability and real-time decision-making. It transforms fragmented operational data into clear, conversational answers about why margins dropped or which region under-performed.
Business professionals receive immediate, actionable insights in English, Hindi, and multiple regional languages. Read more here about its predictive layer that lets teams ask forward-looking questions, and how the startup now serves 157 customers across India, UAE and Africa.
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).