Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 197th 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.
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Q1: Environmental compliance
Many companies struggle with Scope 3 compliance, concerning the indirect emissions from vendors and the broader value chain. How can technology help here?
Q2: Brand engagement
Many brands today face a crisis of outreach. Despite massive ad budgets, they end up with passive, fragmented data about customer intent. How can this problem be tackled?
Q3: Sports performance
Consistent practice and training are important for enhancing performance in sports—but that is not sufficient to get ahead. What else is the missing factor, and how can it be delivered?
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Q4: Environmental sustainability
Many temple flowers are being dumped, untreated, into water bodies. This increases pollution and health hazards. How can this practice be viably reduced?
Q5: EV servicing
Many mechanics lack proper diagnostic tools for EV servicing. They resort to manual checks or time-intensive machines that can take over eight hours for diagnosis. Where is the entrepreneurship 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: Environmental compliance
Founded by Rajesh Patel and Giri Krishnaswamy, Snowkap leverages AI to help companies clean up their supply chains. It supports businesses across four stages: capturing data, generating insights, planning actions, and measuring impact.
It consolidates ESG and GHG data from multiple sources, including PDFs, invoices, and procurement records. Read more here about how the platform helps evaluate vendors and suggest lower-emission alternatives for clients such as Tata Global Beverages, Senco Gold, and JSW Steel.
A2: Brand engagement
Founded by Trigam Mukherjee and Trilokjit Sengupta, Two Tree Ventures’ WNNR platform leverages gamification to transform simple user interactions into rich, actionable customer insights. It offers products for publishing, micro-engagement, and ad units.
The platform helps ethically collect first-party data and reduce dependency on exorbitant media spends. Read more here about how WNNR enables brands to discover consumer preferences and motivations before the purchase happens.
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A3: Sports performance
It is access to sparring partners that helps keep sportspersons on their toes and perfect their match awareness, according to Vikas Chaurasia, Founder of Sparring Player. The sports-tech startup connects junior athletes with top players of tennis and badminton for structured sparring sessions.
This helps them realistically think or react under real match conditions of unpredictability, mental noise, and pace-shifting. Read more here about its 140 verified sparring partners, and how it has facilitated 2,900 hours of sparring across 19 Indian cities.
A4: Environmental sustainability
Founded by Ankit Agarwal, Phool.co upcycles temple waste into sustainable incense and vegan leather. It reduces wastage dumped into rivers and also creates dignified jobs for hundreds of women workers.
It currently processes over 30 tons of temple waste daily from five major pilgrimage towns. Read more here about how it has already diverted over 42,300 tons of floral waste from river dumping, preventing the release of more than 4,230 kilograms of harmful pesticides.
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A5: EV servicing
Founded by Shubham Mishra and Ajay Vashisht, E-Vega Mobility Labs has developed EV Doctor, a compact, AI-powered device that quickly diagnoses EV battery health. Weighing just 300 grams, it is reportedly used by 1,500 B2B clients worldwide.
It uses over 24 proprietary AI models, which have been trained on more than 200,000 real-world battery datasets. Read more here about how it has helped clients like Zypp, Gauss and MG Motor, with overseas market penetration in Mexico, the US, Vietnam, South Korea, and China as well.
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 (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).
