Sustainability, livelihood, AI: test your business creativity with Edition 248 of our weekly quiz!
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 248th quiz. Ready?
This insightful feature from YourStory tests and strengthens your business acumen! Here are 5 questions to kick off this 248th 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 248th 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: Plastic waste
Much of the plastic from packaged goods eventually finds its way to landfills. What are some useful products that can be generated from this waste, thus avoiding dumping in landfills?
Q2: Educational assessment
A test score tells a school how a student performed, but not necessarily where their understanding is strong or weak. How can such assessments be improved?
Q3: Skills and livelihood
Many rural women have traditional skills in handicrafts, but limited access to markets, design and regular income. How can this gap be bridged?
Q4: Satellite data
A satellite collects more data than it can send back to Earth – a lot of that data is discarded or waits for hours to come down. How can such data be more effectively utilised?
Q5: Voice fakes
Scams via AI-generated voices and synthetic media can have damaging impacts on unsuspecting citizens. How can this problem be addressed?
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: Plastic waste
Founded by Rahul Vashukhi and Vikash Kumar, Minus Degre recycles plastic waste into a material called Eco-Panel. This can then be molded into products ranging from key chains to furniture.
The startup has recycled 300 tonnes of plastic waste so far, and claims it has acquired more than 200 business clients over the past years. Read more here about how it recorded annual revenue of Rs 1.25 crore in FY26, and the pricing of its products.
A2: Educational assessment
Founded by Karan Gupta, Shikhar Sethi and Abhimanyu Jhajharia, assessment platform AssessPrep tags every question to a topic and curriculum standard. This allows schools to see where an individual student or an entire class is falling short.
The questions are tagged to one of more than 600 built-in curriculum standard sets, including IB, Cambridge, NGSS, Advanced Placement, and ACARA. Read more here about how it uses AI- generated assessment along with teacher reviews, and how it works with more than 800 schools across 85 countries.
A3: Skills and livelihood
Founded by Nagmani Roy, the Earthomadic Foundation and Project Anuswaar connect traditional crafts with the modern market to create sustainable livelihood opportunities for rural women. It goes beyond basic training to cover design, product, quality, and marketing.
It offers livelihood programmes via clusters that work with bamboo, terracotta, appliqué, leather, crochet, jute, and water hyacinth. Read more here about how business worth around Rs 1.5 crore has been generated over the past four years.
A4: Satellite data
Founded by Ronak Kumar Samantray, TakeMe2Space has built technology to process satellite data up in outer space itself. This helps transmit useful information to Earth rather than just a raw data feed.
It charges $2 a minute for computing time on its satellites and is now raising funds to build a 50-kilowatt data centre in orbit. Read more here about its uplinking of large AI models from the ground, and its fundraise from Chiratae Ventures, Unicorn India Ventures, Artha Venture Fund, and SeaFund.
A5: Voice fakes
Founded by Tarini Padmanabhuni, DetectifAI is building technology to help verify humans and detect AI-generated and manipulated audio. This prevents phishing attacks, financial fraud, and disinformation.
Its fraud detection models are designed to run on-device and at the network edge, allowing fake callers to be flagged in real time without a cloud round trip. Read more here about its usage in the BFSI and healthcare sectors, where voice-based verification systems play a critical role.
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.