Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 216th 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 Reviewsection as well, with takeaways from over 355 titles on creativity and entrepreneurship, and our weekend PhotoSparkssection on creativity in the arts.
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Q1: Automation and banking
Digital transformation often promises efficiency for banking and finance institutions, but faces challenges in getting clean data, going beyond pilots, or in dealing with changing regulations. Where is the entrepreneurial opportunity here?
Q2: Pharma value chains
Many pharmaceutical plants do not reach their full business potential due to scattered documentation, unpredictable logistics, volatile pricing, and slow responses from international buyers. How can technology help tackle these issues?
Q3: Eye care
Eye care is a critical need for patients with cataracts, corneal ulcers and fungal infections. But treatment and support at scale remain a challenge. How can this problem be addressed?
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Q4: Women empowerment
Many girls and women from underserved communities face severe challenges with livelihood, safety and health. How can they be effectively empowered to tackle these multiple problems?
Q5: Software testing
Software is becoming more complex and release cycles are shrinking. Enterprise software testing is becoming a challenge here. How can this be tackled?
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: Automation and banking
Headed by Deviprasad Thrivikraman, Zentis AI aims to become a top AI automation player for the BFSI sector. It offers a no-code studio and lightweight, CPU-friendly specialised language models.
It transforms core processes and makes AI safe, compliant, and widely adoptable. Read more here about its 25 clients for whom it offers automation assistants for internal audits and other agents for tasks like claims or loan applications.
A2: Pharma value chains
Founded by Sagar Khetiya, the startup GenAide purchases pharma products from facilities and manages the entire export journey. This includes regulatory documentation, facility audits, packaging compliance, freight negotiations, customs, and insurance.
Its structured catalogue now includes over 5,000 products sourced from a vetted pool of 800+ manufacturers across India. Read more here about its AI-led upgrades to reduce preparation time for dossiers and labels, and how it operates in over 10 international markets.
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A3: Eye care
Headed by Nikkhil Masurkar, ENTOD Pharmaceuticals has developed a 250+ product portfolio spanning ophthalmology, ENT, and dermatology. It is developing formulations for corneal wound healing and insulin-based ocular therapies.
The multi-generation family business is now building generative AI models trained on ophthalmic and dermatological data for rapid molecule screening and formulation optimisation. Read more here about its journey and how it is present in more than 20 countries today.
A4: Women empowerment
Founded by Devendra Kumar, Ladli Foundation Trust focuses on women’s empowerment via girl-child education, health, hygiene, social protection, and youth rehabilitation. Its vision is that every girl deserves safety, support and education.
It trains girls in computer literacy and language proficiency, and offers medical checkups and holistic development. Read more here about how it has donated laboratories to schools, rehabilitates school sanitation systems, and provides mentorship to underprivileged girls.
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A5: Software testing
Founded by Harry Rao, deeptech startup TestGrid leverages AI, automation, and scalable cloud infrastructure via TestOS. This operating system for end-to-end testing is designed to eliminate bottlenecks, cut costs, and enable autonomous quality engineering.
The platform unifies automation, cloud testing, and agentic intelligence to make enterprise software testing faster, smarter, and far more cost-efficient. Read more here about how it has 20 of the Fortune 100 companies as clients for API testing and performance assessment.
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).
Original Article
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