‘We do not do charity. We share our happiness’ – 30 quotes from Indian startup journeys

From innovation to impact, witness the memorable journey of Indian entrepreneurship in these excerpts and stories! StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 30 gems and insights from the week of June 12-18 with your colleagues and networks, and go back to the original articles for more insights. 

One day you might be able to buy a fleet of cars, but you can’t buy time. — Vikas Khanna, Chef

Traditional water harvesting systems provide very simple, age-old, time-tested solutions to the water scarcity problems. — Shree Padre

Water literacy is very poor in our country. The urban population wastes more than the rural population. — Goutam Surana, Eco365

Educate yourself daily to become better and better. — Gitanjali Maini, Gallery G

India’s digital economy has acquired a momentum of its own and its low-cost digital technology is being talked about the world over. — Ravi Shankar Prasad, Electronics and Information Technology Minister

Public policy plays a pivotal role in creating an enabling environment conducive to innovation. — Chandrajit Banerjee, CII

Smaller colleges should have better professors… there, students need much more attention and encouragement, and exposure. — Ravi Suhag, GoJek

People in India seem to have the hunger to learn more and achieve more compared to other markets. — Ishan Gupta, Udacity

For decades insurances have been mis-sold, under the pretext of being an investment option. It is a cover and should be treated as just that. — Neelabh Sanyal, Kuvera

We are riddled with centuries of conscious and subconscious biases. As women, it falls upon us to correct them. — Chandni Jafri, Mumbai Angels

Remember that you are an entrepreneur, not a ‘woman tech entrepreneur’. You are likely to have it twice as difficult, be prepared for that. — Anu Acharya, MapMyGenome

A woman in the driver’s seat is a symbol of social change. — Suman Lata, Rural Self-Employment Training Institute

If you tell an engaging tale carrying an important message, it is bound to make people aware about the issue. — Syed Ahmed Afzal, Laal Rang

Serial entrepreneurs don’t normally build businesses; they create them to sell. It never works. — Ronnie Screwvala, USports

Consumer credit in India is highly underpenetrated and is a complex problem to solve. — Abheek Anand, Sequoia Capital India Advisors

The challenges for startups in online real estate is that people hardly entertain small companies when it comes to buying property. — Rounak Goklaney

Model rocketry is an over $1.2-billion global industry with India contributing zero to it. — Divyanshu Poddar, Rocketeers

In Chhattisgarh, the youth do not want to do farming because farming is the only business where the farmers have to take all kinds of risks without expecting profits. — Rupesh Baghel, farmer

Most of the urban workforce has a sedentary lifestyle, and yet, eats food designed for a labour-intensive day. — Shristi Shaw, WIMWI Foods

In less than 10 years, Gen Z digital natives will hold most of the buying power globally. — Manish Pillewar, Sahaj Software

Connected solutions are coming to India faster than you think. Our camera sensors use AI to enforce traffic laws. We are able to manage bus fleets on real-time traffic. — Vijay Ratnaparkhe, Robert Bosch Engineering India

The data generated is what companies should make use of to figure out new business models. — Naganand Doraswamy, Ideaspring Capital

The tech industry is going through a transformational shift with data right at the center. — Deepak Visweswaraiah, NetApp India

We are only beginning to understand the consumer needs robots can satisfy. — Sneh Vaswani, Emotix

There is nothing like getting pleasure and satisfaction out of your livelihood. — Ashok Gupta, traffic policeman

Often, we need to learn to get along with people we don’t really like; at times, we need to put a team ahead of an individual; frequently, we must accept failure or defeat. — Nupur Dhingra Paiva, Art of Sport

Bengaluru is among the top five most favourable ecosystems for startups in the world and the World Economic Forum has given it the ‘most dynamic city in the world’ tag. — Priyank Kharge, Karnataka IT and BT minister

Corporate boards, institutional funders, and CSR leaders grapple with the critical problems of CSR lifecycle management and impact measurement. — Siddharth Nautiyal, Omidyar Network

Ask if you are doing something that will make you money or something that will make your children more successful and your grandchildren happier. — Alan Cooper, ‘father of Visual Basic’

It is only after achieving positive cash flow that an entrepreneur is really in control of his/her own destiny. — Klaas Oskam, Signal Hill Capital Advisory

Coworking spaces are better than business centres, which are purely rental-based businesses. — Shiv Prasad Singh, RISCS

If you don’t have money, you don’t think about doing something frivolous. You focus on the core. — Florian Gschwandtner, Runtastic

We do not do charity. We share our happiness. — Abhijeet Chandra, K.ISH Initiative

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).