Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 166th 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: Climate change

Climate finance has become an urgent necessity for organisations in their initiatives to tackle climate change.  How can such climate finance be made accessible, scalable and easy to adopt?

Q2: Women’s health

Women looking for healthcare solutions are often unable to find the correct fit when it comes to experts like gynecologists, nutritionists or therapists. How can they find the right expertise in such cases, and the relevant programmes?

Q3: Fintech security

Fintech players have mushroomed in recent years, but the risk of payment fraud is increasing as well. Newer technologies can also increase the threat level. How can these challenges be tackled?

Q4: Retail and delivery

Small retailers rely largely on phone calls and WhatsApp messages to manage their orders. This results in slow deliveries as compared to larger ecommerce players. How can this performance be improved?

Q5: Motor functions

Millions of people suffer from motor function loss due to conditions such as stroke, cerebral palsy, ageing, and accidents. How can their ability to perform everyday tasks be improved?

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: Climate change

Anirudh Gupta and Siddhanth Jayaram have founded Climes, a climate tech startup that has developed a digital finance engine to facilitate the flow of capital into climate projects. Climes Carbon Counter is a data-driven carbon accounting tool geared to help logistics and transportation providers calculate their carbon footprint.

It also has a carbon financing feature that helps brands purchase and distribute carbon credits both physically and digitally. Read more here about how Climes has worked with the likes of travel tech platform MakeMyTrip, sustainable footwear startup Neeman’s, and snacking brand Nutty Gritties.

A2: Women’s health

Swarnima Bhattacharya co-founded Gytree as a femtech startup that offers products, services, and programmes to address diverse aspects of women’s health. “We have consciously built it as an ecosystem for women’s health across life stages,” she explains.

Gytree has 100 empanelled experts, and offers several programmes to address nutrition, weight management, midlife challenges, diabetes management, and psychological assessment. Read more here about how it has a referral network, and works with corporates for the healthcare of their women employees.

A3: Fintech security

“A great number of fintechs are still in the stages of developing their infrastructure and security measures, therefore appealing to hackers,” cautions Shams Tabrej, CEO of Ezeepay. Advanced technologies like peer-to-peer payment systems and cryptocurrency have increased the threat level.

“The best method to reduce fraud drastically is through implementing multi-factor authentication,” he advises. Read more here about how AI and ML tools can help detect fraudulent activities in real-time, and why fintech players need to regularly educate customers about phishing scams and weak passwords.

A4: Retail and delivery

Alok Chawla, Neeta Rijwani, and Virendra Kumar launched Kiko Live as a SaaS solution to help small retailers build, manage, and grow their home delivery businesses. They can create digital storefronts in as little as 24 hours.

The platform supports sellers with a product repository, a user-friendly interface, and hyperlocal logistics solutions for quick deliveries. Read more here about how it reduces operational complexity by acting as a consolidator, connecting stores and third-party delivery partners.

A5: Motor functions

Subtlebotic, founded by Sivasanthosh A, has developed a product called Limb Assist to restore limb mobility for individuals who have lost motor functions. The lightweight, external wearable motor system provides support to the fingers for fine motor functions.

Limb Assist helps users grip and carry objects such as cups, plates, tools, and bags. Read more here about how it also helps with typing, writing, buttoning clothes, and fastening zippers.

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).

Fibroheal Woundcare on Sunday said it had raised Rs 6.3 crore in a pre-Series A funding round from existing promoters and a new set of investors, including leading surgeons, medical professionals, and bankers.

The company also has an additional commitment of another Rs 10 crore from existing and some new investors.

The silk proteins-based medical devices startup intends to use the newly raised funds to scale up its go-to-market strategy, recruit more people, and invest in its product pipeline in the medical devices segment.

“Woundcare is a fast growing segment of the health and wellness sector. Fibroheal is poised to become a major player in this sector with a differentiated technology based on ‘Natural Silk’, a committed leadership and a competent team,” said KK Narayanan, who also invested in this round. Narayanan previously built Metahelix Life Sciences which got acquired by Rallis India, and co-founded Kottaram Agrofoods (Soulfull Cereals) which got acquired by Tata Consumer products.

The fundraise comes amidst significant growth in India’s wound care market, driven by a rise in chronic diseases, growing healthcare expenditures and awareness of wound care solutions, according to a 2024 report by research firm Mordor Intelligence.

Founded in 2017 by Vivek Mishra & Bharat Tandon, Fibroheal’s products are being used in more than 500 hospitals across India and has a presence in over 19 states. The company has also branched out to selling its products on various ecommerce platforms.

The company’s product line, which includes foams, mesh, and powders, among others, is used to heal different types of acute, chronic, traumatic, post-operative, non-healing or difficult-to-heal wounds like bed sores or infected C-section wounds, among others.

Fibroheal has previously raised money from existing promoters Telama Investments, CCAMP and KITVEN.

Hello,

The way AI is built is about to change.

That’s what OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever thinks as he predicts that pre-training is bound to end soon. Next-generation models, he predicted, are going to “be agentic in a real way.” 

He also said future AI systems will be able to work things out step-by-step in a way that is more comparable to thinking, unlike today’s AI, which mostly pattern-matches based on what a model has seen before.

OpenAI, meanwhile, wants payback. The ChatGPT maker published a blog post featuring Elon Musk’s old emails in which he pushed for the AI startup to be a for-profit. The move comes in response to Musk moving the court to stop OpenAI from moving to a for-profit business. 

The published emails also revealed Musk sought to be OpenAI’s CEO and outlined a plan where he would “unequivocally have initial control of the company” but said that would be temporary. The two other OpenAI co-founders objected, saying he would hold too much power.

ICYMI: Why OpenAI whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, who resorted to suicide, was critiquing ChatGPT.

While many folks on Instagram are having a light-hearted moment enjoying AI-generated spoofs of Bollywood movies, investors are serious about where to put the big bucks.

 Software firm Databricks, which helps enterprises process and analyse their data using AI, is nearing a deal that could become one of the largest venture capital funding rounds in history. It’s close to raising $9.5 billion.

If finalised, it would far surpass OpenAI’s $6.6-billion funding round—the largest-ever venture capital round in history.

Talk about scoring big bucks.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• A peek into Indian entrepreneurs’ reading list
• Amit Trivedi on balancing creativity with business
• This bar offers cocktails ‘ASPER’ seasons

Here’s your trivia for today: What is considered the oldest library in the world?

Books

Inside Indian entrepreneurs’ reading list

As the Indian startup ecosystem continues to innovate and disrupt the tech infrastructure, entrepreneurs and investors keep going back to business manuals and handbooks that have helped forge their decision-making skills to keep pace. 

YS Life dives into the personal libraries of some of the most notable Indian entrepreneurs and investors to uncover the books that have shaped their thought processes in 2024. 

Page turner:

• Kaivalya Vohra: Co-founder, Zepto: Atomic Habits by James Clear reminded me that progress is about compounding those tiny 1% improvements every day—whether it’s improving customer experiences or team efficiency.
• Kunal Bahl: Co-founder, Snapdeal and Titan Capital: I loved Poor Charlie’s Almanack’s (check the spelling of the title) (by Charlie Munger) multidisciplinary approach, emphasis on mental models, and focus on integrity and lifelong learning.
• Priyanka Gill: Co-founder, Good Glamm Group: The Hard Thing About Hard Things is like a trusted mentor for navigating the realities of running a business. It addresses the gritty, complex challenges of entrepreneurship with unfiltered honesty.

Upbeat

Amit Trivedi on balancing creativity with business

Earlier this year, the playback singer and composer Amit Trivedi announced his latest album—Azaad Collab—which features 22 music artists across 13 tracks. Amit has collaborated with the likes of Sunidhi Chauhan, Armaan Malik, Jubin Nautiyal, and Neeti Mohan, among others, to celebrate diverse voices in the Indian music industry. 

“It is a freedom of expression, of creating something that I resonate with, and like putting out there, without anybody telling me what to make and how to make it,” he reflects. 

Passion for music:

• “There is nothing called struggle, you just flow and you need to love what you’re doing, and be very passionate and dedicated to it…Things just flow and fall into place, that’s what happened to me,” Amit says. 
• Deadlines in particular are spoilsports for creativity. “Creativity is very fluid, it’s not stuck to a particular time limit…But as far as films are concerned, they have release dates set way in advance. We have to work according to those dates…”
• Music-composing is art, at the end of the day, Amit says. Having said that, to also keep creating tracks that are ‘commercial’ and resonate with the masses, it is important to find a balance. 

Wine and Food

This bar offers cocktails ‘ASPER’ seasons

It’s not just Gurugram’s skyline that vies for attention; its cocktail-forward restaurants and bars, too, are making noise for the right reasons. The newest kid to join the block is ASPER, set in the millennium city’s popular hotspot, The Kitchens, in DLF Phase 3. 

Highlights:

• Dolce and Banana cocktail is a spin on the fashion brand D&G. This whisky-based drink from the ‘Spring’ section, with the addition of banana cordial, cinnamon, tincture, and lime juice, bursts with tropical flavours.
• If you are an out-and-out chai fan, there’s a drink called Between the Sheets. The masala tea-infused gin cocktail includes tender coconut water and pandan leaf, creating an earthy taste on your palate.  
• Among the small plates, Shrooms and Burrata, Yam Koobideh Kebob paired with fresh pita, labneh, and fresh chilli sauce, and the Tamarind Caramel Pork Belly with crispy garlic chips on the side left an impression. 

News & updates

• Fake news: The BBC has filed a complaint with the US tech giant Apple over AI-generated fake news that was shared on iPhones and attributed to the broadcaster. One of the group notifications by Apple Intelligence suggested that the BBC News website had published an article claiming that Luigi Mangione, who was arrested in the US over the murder of a healthcare executive, had committed suicide.
• Mainstream: MicroStrategy, the preferred high beta play on the price of bitcoin, will join the Nasdaq 100 index, a move that could further increase demand for the controversial stock that has been on a torrid run this year, alongside the price of the cryptocurrency.
• Social media ban: A US appeals court rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest of the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on the app.

What is considered the oldest library in the world?

Answer: The Royal Library of Ebla, located near Mardikh, Syria. It is estimated to date back to 2500-2250 BC. 

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