Food, payments, AI: test your business creativity with Edition 233 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 233rd quiz. Ready?
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 233rd 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 233rd 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: Security
Cyber-attack incidents and methods are rapidly growing, and security teams need to detect threats and respond faster. How can technology help here?
Q2: Dining habits
Many diners today seek authentic, multi-cuisine experiences at home, and have gone beyond single-cuisine consumption. Where is the entrepreneurial opportunity here?
Q3: Chip design
In high-volume, cost-sensitive markets, it is the efficiency and responsiveness of chips that matter more than raw compute performance. How can chip design be improved in such contexts?
Q4: Clean food
Consumers increasingly want transparency and safety in their food supply, which includes pesticide-free ingredients, sustainable sourcing, natural food, and healthy choices. How can these desires and needs be met?
Q5: Payments and processing
In a fast-moving digital world, payments are instant – but tracking those payments often takes days. How can reimbursements be speeded up and policy violations be flagged quickly and efficiently?
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: Security
Headed by Ankur Singla, Exaforce leverages AI in its security architecture and delivers robust solutions via agentic platforms. Its offerings include MDR (managed detection and response) oversight to improve response speed and resilience across critical environments.
Its real-time knowledge graph gives agents complete context from the start, and provides rich investigation and visualisation experiences. Read more here about its Series B funding to further support its multi-model AI capabilities.
A2: Dining habits
Founded by Deb Mukherjee, Moi Soi is a pan-Asian food and beverage brand that provides a range of products across 32 categories to over 250 cities in India. This includes sauces, chilli oils, noodles, rice papers, ready-to-eat curries, and matcha powder.
Consumers are increasingly exploring global cuisines and seek convenient, high-quality experiences at home, observes GVFL Managing Director Mihir Joshi. Read more here about Moi Soi’s positioning in the ready-to-cook space, and its presence in the markets of Australia, South Africa, Dubai, and Germany.
A3: Chip design
Founded by Ramamurthy Sivakumar, HrdWyr has developed AI-native System-on-Chip (AISoC) offerings that are purpose-built for specific industries. “The real power of AI will be unlocked as we enter the era of Physical AI, where advanced intelligence seamlessly integrates with real-world systems,” Sivakumar says.
“HrdWyr is building a family of AI chips addressing power management and efficiency across multiple sectors, including white goods, EVs and data centres,” observes Ideaspring Capital Managing Partner Naganand Doraswamy. Read more here about such innovations in intelligent edge processing, superior power efficiency, minimal latency, and streamlined system design.
A4: Clean food
Safe Harvest operates in the clean-label and pesticide-free food segment, supported by over 100,000 farmers. It has a pesticide testing system across cereals, grains, millets, pulses, flours, spices, oils, honey, and natural sweeteners.
It has been acquired by Wingreens Farms, a purpose-driven food company focused on women-led livelihoods and supply chain innovation. Read more here about how Wingreens is positioning itself as a trusted, multi-category, better-for-you food platform.
A5: Payments and processing
Founded by Abhishek Saxena, Sanjeev Pandey and Abhinav Saxena, the Omnicard platform is a business fintech operating system. It brings all payments into one system that works across different payment methods.
It spans spend management with programmable controls as well as corporate cards, bill payments, fleet transactions, and automated reimbursements. Read more here about its governed system where rules, approvals, and data are embedded into every transaction, transforming payments into a ‘smart spend ecosystem.’
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.