Health, logistics, environment: test your business creativity with Edition 236 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 236th 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 236th 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: Rural supply
Rural store managers spend a lot of time in travelling to wholesale markets to restock, which involves high costs and limited choice. Where is the entrepreneurial opportunity here?
Q2: Health food
There is growing consumer demand for healthy food and nutritious ingredients. What are some ways of tapping this market?
Q3: Carbon emissions
In the face of global warming, it is important to reduce carbon emissions. Is there way to generate wealth out of this waste as well?
Q4: Coffee waste
Coffee waste can be a valuable source of biologically active ingredients. Where can such inputs help in health systems?
Q5: Surgical stitches
Joining two thin blood vessels is a highly demanding task in surgery. What are ways of reducing the complexity and complications 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: Rural supply
Founded C Prasanna Kumar, VilCart has built a kirana-led rural commerce network that connects manufacturers, brands and farmer-producer organisations. They supply over 100,000 stores across 30,000 villages in South India.
This feeds the next big consumption wave from smaller towns and villages. Read more here about VilCart’s network and the creation of its in-house brands that yield better margins.
A2: Health food
Founded by Kuldeep Parewa, Akhil Kansal and Aayushi Khandelwal, Anveshan is a clean-label food brand built around traditional nutrition. It fills the market gap in clean, authentic and minimally processed food products.
India’s food and nutrition market is ‘premiumising’, with consumers seeking more transparency, quality and trust, according to investor Kanika Mayar. Read more here about how the healthy food category is being helped by e-commerce and D2C brands.
A3: Carbon emissions
Founded by Shreyansh Jain, Intrinsic Foundries is a carbon-to-value biomanufacturing company. Its micro-algae carbon capture technology benefits from a policy push in the sector as well.
It converts industrial emissions, effluents and residues into premium biochemicals using proprietary microbial biorefinery systems. Read more here about how it has raised funding to support its view of carbon as not waste, but a resource waiting to be transformed.
A4: Coffee waste
Founded by Bipin Pradeep Kumar, Samik Ghosh and Hiroaki Kitano, Iom Bioworks is a microbiome healthcare company. It converts under-utilised coffee husk into pectic oligosaccharides, a prebiotic fibre with documented neuroprotective potential.
This helps the two-way communication between the digestive system and the brain, which is tied to mood, sleep and stress. Read more here about the productive uses of such agri waste, backed by scientific research.
A5: Surgical stitches
Founded by Anand Parikh, Shira Medtech is a medical device startup that has developed a low-cost, high-precision implantable device. It enables sutureless microvascular anastomosis, which is the faster and safer joining of tiny blood vessels.
Its Shira Clamp device has already been in use by surgeons since 2018. Read more here about how such innovation can cut operating time, reduce the skill barrier, and improve outcomes, particularly in smaller hospitals that lack super-specialists.
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.