eChai Quiz
Fifteen for the room, from today's rocket launch through Ahmedabad's founders to a few global classics. Answer by a show of hands, then we reveal the green one.
Tap → or Space to start · the group answers by picking a side
Question 1 of 15
Skyroot. Founded in 2018 by two ex-ISRO engineers in Hyderabad, its Vikram-1 is India's first privately built orbital rocket. Agnikul, Pixxel and Dhruva are all real space startups, which is what makes it tricky.
Question 2 of 15
Vikram Sarabhai. Born into Ahmedabad's Sarabhai mill family, he founded PRL, ISRO and IIM Ahmedabad. Today's private rocket carries his name.
Question 3 of 15
Emergent. Its 130 million dollar round was the biggest of the week and minted a new unicorn. Nearly 60 percent of the week's startup funding went to AI.
Question 4 of 15
10 years. Launched January 16, 2016, now marked as National Startup Day. A decade on: 207,000 plus recognized startups and 100 plus unicorns.
Question 5 of 15
Ranchhodlal Chhotalal. A government clerk who spent over a decade chasing mechanized spinning, he opened the city's first mill in 1861 at Shahpur. The famous names, Lalbhai and Sarabhai, came after him.
Question 6 of 15
Social harmony. The tiger and the goat sharing one cup meant the powerful and the meek drinking chai as equals, a radical idea back in 1919.
Question 7 of 15
A soda fountain shop. Vadilal Gandhi's son later made ice cream on a hand-cranked salt-and-ice machine. Four generations on, it exports to 45 plus countries.
Question 8 of 15
An architect. Bakeri applied a designer's eye to ugly metal air coolers in 1988, nearly lost the company to over-diversification, then refocused on one product and went global.
Question 9 of 15
A government lab chemist. He made Nirma detergent in his backyard and sold it door to door on his bicycle at 3 rupees a kg while Surf cost around 13. He named it after his daughter Nirupama.
Question 10 of 15
Foodiebay. Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah started by scanning restaurant menus in 2008, then renamed it Zomato in 2010 to avoid any clash with eBay.
Question 11 of 15
50. She left a top banking career in 2012, at 50, to start Nykaa with largely her own money, when everyone said beauty would not sell online.
Question 12 of 15
Freshworks. Girish Mathrubootham started it in Chennai in 2010 and took it to Nasdaq in 2021, the first Indian SaaS to list there. Zoho is older but has never gone public.
Question 13 of 15
150 plus. Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth were turned down by more than 150 investors between 2012 and 2014 before Dream11 became India's first gaming unicorn.
Question 14 of 15
Presidential-themed cereal boxes. During the 2008 election they sold Obama O's and Cap'n McCain's at about 40 dollars a box, raising roughly 30,000 dollars. Air mattresses is the trap: that was the original idea, not what they sold to survive.
Question 15 of 15
Snowboards. Tobias Lutke wanted to sell snowboards online, found the e-commerce software so bad he built his own, and realized the platform was the real business.