‘Experience is a harsh but efficient teacher’ – 50 quotes from Indian startup journeys
From e-learning to experiential learning, witness the memorable journey of Indian entrepreneurship in these excerpts and stories! StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 50 gems and insights from the week of June 7-13 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights!
Find right partners, who are doers not speculators.
While entrepreneurs are special breeds, their spouses are no less.
- Shweta Choudhary Judge, ‘Being an Entrepreneur’s Wife’
There is more demand for drivers than supply.
Over time, the dominant business model of e-commerce players has settled on the marketplace model.
- Anand Daniel, Accel Partners
The sports merchandise market in India is pegged around Rs 5,000 crore.
A copied image can never communicate your ideals and vision.
Bake security into your code.
- Shikhil Sharma, Czar Securities
A very sharply articulated brand is critical in building private labels.
- Rajiv Shrivastava, Urban Ladder
I keep my books in the cab and make it a point to study between bookings.
Your startup learnings may not be useful for a corporate job, but it will be an asset for another startup.
For a startup, the milestone before institutional funding is to get the model right.
Now, I earn less, but I enjoy it much more.
- Nistha Tripathi, counsellor
For some users push notification is the product itself.
Sharing is caring, always give back to the society.
Nearly 800 women die every day due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth.
– World Health Organisation
Only 25.3% of children in third grade can do a simple two digit subtraction in India.
- ASER Report 2014
India accounts for 32% of the world’s suicides.
- World Mental Health Survey 2010
Chronic diseases are fast becoming a major health risk for a majority of Indians, largely due to factors relating to the changing modern lifestyle.
- Pankaj Singh, La Renon Healthcare
I personally believe there’s a sort of ‘propaganda’ that pro-environment is anti-development.
- Ritu Bhardwaj, Common Thread
Most of the time, people assume that you (as a woman) are not running the business or not the final one in charge.
We have some great talent, but risk taking abilities are low. They end up working with big companies.
- Deepak Abbot, Times Internet
If anything happens to me, I want the company to still run.
- Roshni Mahtani, Tickled Media
Pay attention to every email, every comment. Drive conversations. As many as you can.
We are witnessing the first generation of startups in India as a mass movement.
– Rajesh Kumar, Tata Elxsi incub@TE
We can build smarter cities in the bottom-up way than top down.
- Tavleen Mehendiratta, Smart City Labs.io
We believe in stories with happy beginnings.
- Amrita Samant, Mommy Shots
Challenges have always been my driving force. They are my greatest source of strength.
– Sneh Sharma, Ittisa
We mercilessly rejected, and continue to reject, so many samples and vendors until we get what we want.
- Giridhar Soundarajan, Barrel Exhaust
This business is as much about technology (maybe even more) as it is about food.
For the front-end, which drives execution and business growth for any organisation, there is no standard process or platform that can be adopted to enhance its effectiveness.
Without making mistakes you cannot learn and become better.
Once you are alone with nature and world around you nothing else matters.
Sugarcane is one of the most affordable health drinks.
- Kaushik Srinivasan, CaneXpress
‘Ignorance of law’does not legally excuse one from payment of interest, penalty and prosecution.
A lot of uproar about the funding and valuations is because this is happening for the first time in India.
People do not want to browse through pages of listings. They expect things to be done in a matter of few taps on the mobile phone.
Always chose learning over cash and other considerations.
Experience is a harsh but efficient teacher.
- Udhay Kumar Padmanabhan, ABOVE Solutions
The speed of the train is the speed of the engine. It’s about leading.
- Subhashish Acharya, Project Starfish
If you wait until you are ready, it is almost certainly too late.
Our greatest reward is when we see the transformation of these hobbyists into professional painters.
– Gagan Jain, Rang Rage
Our brains are actually wired for storytelling.
Schools and learning centres have very high sales cycles and surviving via B2B business channels is impossible in the long run.
- Jairam Bhattacharya, ConveGenius
It is imperative to convert a negative chronological landmark to a positive one.
Many NGOs suffer in paucity of funds. Even though they are doing tremendous social work, owing to non-recognition, they don’t get their due credibility.
As big data analytics is in its infancy in India today, huge efforts would need to be made to improve the quality of data stored by organisations and enterprises.
Why should only Batman and Spiderman wear cool gloves?
My family is the biggest motivation.
- Reena Bino, Knit n Purl Ocean
Never self pity yourself.
- Nirmala Kewlani, Nina Foundation
Bangalore’s 3,000 million litres of rainfall needs to be harvested.
- S. Vishwanath, ‘The Hindu’
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).