Sports, sensors, sustainability: test your business creativity with Edition 251 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 251st 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 251st 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: Debt collection
For banks, debt collection as an activity is highly fragmented and labour-intensive, thereby leading to challenges in revenue assurance and scale. How can this problem be fixed?
Q2: Pharma and vigilance
Pharma companies must ensure that they get patient safety exactly right, taking into account prescriptions, quality, and shelf-life. How can technology help reduce risks here?
Q3: Agricultural waste
For crops like banana, farmers typically cut down the remaining stems after harvest and discard them. How can this waste be reduced while also creating wealth and livelihood?
Q4: Drone environments
Autonomous machines, drones, robots, and unmanned vehicles need accurate information on their current locations and destinations. Where is the business opportunity here?
Q5: Sports and gaming
New generations of audiences are demanding sport experiences across participation, competition, entertainment, content, and culture. 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: Debt collection
Founded by Karan Mehta and Sonali Jindal, lend-tech firm Rezolv uses AI capabilities for risk assessment, underwriting and debt collection. Its platform covers functions ranging from customer engagement and loan servicing to collections, recoveries and field operations.
It has partnered with more than 20 banks and NBFCs, including ICICI Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, Bajaj Auto Credit, and Muthoot Capital. Read more about its recent fundraise from Vertex Ventures and Norwest India here.
A2: Pharma and vigilance
Founded by Raghav Parvataraju, Graph AI combines AI with deterministic controls, validation layers, and end-to-end audit trails for regulated pharmacovigilance environments. This helps tackle operational complexity and enable traceability, accountability and human oversight.
“Pharmacovigilance has traditionally scaled against rising case volumes by adding people and processes around legacy systems. We believe intelligence can change that,” Parvataraju explains. Read more about how it has reduced case processing turnaround times here.
A3: Agricultural waste
Founded by Jagat Kalyan, Satyam Kumar, and Nitish Kumar Verma, Taruwar Agro Industries extracts fibre from discarded banana stems. It manufactures a variety of products from this fibre, such as file folders, yoga mats, baskets, and prayer mats.
The remaining parts of the banana plant are used to produce vermicompost and plant nutrition liquid – thereby generating local employment as well. Read more here about how it recorded revenue of around Rs 2.5 crore in FY26 via B2B and B2C models.
A4: Drone environments
Founded by Vamshi Bharadwaj MV, Vyshak Y, Vijay HP, and Aravind Thumbur, the startup Yaanendriya designs and manufactures sensors, navigation, and control systems. These accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers are used by drones to sense where they are and where they need to go.
It serves commercial and defence applications via satellite signals, radio-based positioning, ruggedised features, and filtering algorithms to correct for drift. Read more here about how its revenue crossed Rs 68 lakh in its first year, and its fundraise from Piper Serica.
A5: Sports and gaming
Founded by Akshat Rathee, NODWIN Gaming offers platforms for esports as well as mainstream sports. It plans to scale sports competitions, cultivate mass-participation lifestyle properties, and collaborate with governing bodies, rights holders and brands.
“We see an opportunity to build properties that reflect how younger audiences participate, compete, follow, and engage with sport today,” Rathee says. Read more here about its strategic partnerships, commercial alliances, and white-label operations.
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.