Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 242nd 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: Critical materials
Many countries struggle to meet their supply needs of critical materials. What are some ways in which recycling and reclamation approaches can be applied here?
Q2: Sustainability and food
In times of climate change, agricultural practices, and food habits need to become more sustainable. How can attitudes and behaviours be changed in this regard?
Q3: Voice and AI
Voice AI systems currently struggle to handle multiple languages simultaneously, and the language data needs to be routed through third-party servers. How can performance be improved here?
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Q4: Manufacturing and inspection
Manufacturing is the backbone of the economy, yet quality inspection has remained largely manual for decades. How can technology help here?
Q5: Fashion supply chains
Fashion supply chains have run only on relationships and spreadsheets for decades, which leads to inefficiencies and delays. How can these shortcomings 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: Critical materials
Founded by Shubham Vishvakarma and Manikumar Uppala, Metastable Materials extracts lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and aluminium from spent batteries. It dismantles batteries and sells extracted materials as refined commodity metals.
The batteries are dismantled under water, which eliminates the fire risk and toxic gas release from conventional crushing methods. Read more here about its patented technology, and its fundraising from Log9 Materials, Surge, Speciale Invest, Theia Ventures, and Climate9ers.
A2: Sustainability and food
Founded by Srijata Sengupta and Priya Joshi, Foodwize is a social enterprise that aims to shape consumer behaviour and build sustainability leaders. Its initiatives included STHIRA, a youth innovation challenge to developed ideas addressing soil health in food systems.
Its B2B segment, Foodwize Ignite, helps chefs, hospitality professionals, and businesses embed sustainability into their food practices. Read more here about the activities of this organisation at the intersection of food, sustainability and education.
A3: Voice and AI
Founded by Ritu Mehrotra, Sourav Bandyopadhyay, and Abhishek Sharma, Shunya Labs builds proprietary voice AI infrastructure at the CPU level. It is designed for multilingual, accented and code-switched speech.
The platform can run on a CPU with or without internet connectivity, thus reducing deployment costs. Read more here about how it can handle mixed-language conversations in around 55 Indian languages.
A4: Manufacturing and inspection
Founded by Aniruddha Banerjee and Avra Banerjee, SwitchOn integrates AI into manufacturing machines to automate product quality inspection. It enables computer vision to identify surface defects with high precision on fast-moving production lines.
Since 2021, it has expanded to 170 production lines across 60 manufacturing facilities on four continents, for clients like Unilever, Bosch and Maruti Suzuki. Read more here about its fundraising from IvyCap Ventures, SIG Tattva and Trifecta Capital.
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A5: Fashion supply chains
Founded by Pratik Tiwari and Subin Mitra, AI-driven fashion supply chain platform Groyyo connects global fashion brands with a network of apparel manufacturers. Its digital platform manages the entire production lifecycle, including design, trend forecasting, and manufacturing.
This can help reduce production timelines from months to weeks while improving visibility and operational efficiency for brands and suppliers. Read more here about its recent fundraising from Cornerstone Ventures to enhance its platform and expand globally.
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.
