Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 204th 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: Hospitality industry workflows
Despite the dynamic nature of the hospitality industry, business operators still rely on manual inventory tracking and fragmented systems, leading to long hours, data blind spots, and operational inefficiencies. How can this situation be improved?
Q2: Healthcare payments
Health emergencies can be catastrophic for low-income earners, leading to debt, asset sales, or delayed treatment. How can such citizens be empowered to better manage healthcare financial outflows?
Q3: Healthcare for women
Women face challenges in getting access to affordable healthcare that is also customised for their unique needs. Women rarely get the opportunity to share their health perspectives. How can these concerns be addressed?
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Q4: Dignity for the differently-abled
Millions of people with disabilities face barriers in mobility, communication, education, and daily living. What are some ways in which technology can bring them utility along with dignity?
Q5: AI and music generation
Generative AI has taken the creative world by storm in areas such as music creation. But how can such practices benefit the original music creators also, and not just those who mix or recreate music?
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: Hospitality industry workflows
Founded by Smriti Krishna Singh, kristalball bridges the gap between complex hospitality workflows and people-first tech. It uses AI, machine learning, and sensor-based technologies to deliver real-time visibility and decision-making support across inventory, supply chain and daily operations.
“We build for the unsung heroes of hospitality—the servers, bar staff, stockroom teams, ops managers, and finance staff who work long hours behind the scenes,” she says. Read more here about how the platform can enable users to predict inventory needs with 99.98% accuracy.
A2: Healthcare payments
Co-founded by Senu Sam, Mykare has developed a healthcare savings app to turn healthcare planning into a daily financial habit for lower-income groups, who are considered too rich for subsidies and too poor for private insurance. It encourages users to set aside Rs 50–100 daily for future medical expenses and receive access to care managers.
Users can withdraw their savings anytime, which are placed in curated instruments—mutual funds, digital gold, and RBI-regulated recurring deposits. Read more here about how Mykare now has an ARR of $3 million and 80% annual revenue growth.
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A3: Healthcare for women
Led by sisters Priyanjali and Shyanjali Datta, the Aaroogya AI Foundation powers women’s healthcare through AI-led integration for underserved women with human intervention of Community Healthcare Workers (CHWs). Its app is available in a range of local languages and accessible to women with limited literacy.
“Our core IP is an active integrated wellness dashboard that brings nutrition together, mental health together, gynaecological health, hormonal health, sleep, every specialisation together to make an integrated wellness plan for the woman,” Datta explains. Read more here about how the foundation has screened 135,000+ women across India and East Africa.
A4: Dignity for the differently-abled
Aether Biomedicals has developed a strong and reliable bionic hand for people who depend on prosthetics for their livelihood, such as blue-collar workers who need to perform physically demanding work. Trestle Labs’ Kibo (‘Knowledge-In-a-Box’) helps visually-impaired listeners listen, digitise, translate, and “audiotise” printed, handwritten, and digital content across 60 languages.
Thinkerbell Labs has developed a dicta-teacher to help blind students read, write, and type in Braille, on their own. Read more here about other inspiring assistive tech startups like Smart Vision Glasses (for reading, object recognition), Dhanvantri Biomedical (self-cleaning commode), NeoMotion (personalised wheelchairs), and Glovatrix (AI-powered assistive wearables for hearing).
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A5: AI and music generation
Co-founded by Mansoor Rahimat Khan and Siddharth Bhardwaj, Beatoven.ai has developed Maestro as both a creator tool and a business platform for the music industry. It aims to bring professional-quality, ethically sourced generative music to a broad user base while ensuring that artists share in the economic benefits of AI.
Maestro has been trained through official licensing partnerships managed by Musical AI, a rights management platform that attributes outputs to specific tracks. Read more here about how Beatoven.ai has two million registered users who have already generated more than 15 million tracks.
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).
Edited by Kanishk Singh
