‘Don’t chase valuation, chase the right partner’ — 40 quotes from Indian startup journeys

From product to partners, 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 40 gems and insights from the week of August 21-27 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. 

If you are launching an initiative, you should either do a good job or not do it at all. — Narasimhamurthy

Things really fall from the heavens when you’re the right person with the right intent. — Khushroo Suntook, Bisleri India founder

Farming needs innovation and India will lead the way because many youngsters are looking to make farming productive. — Mrityunjaya Singh, CLAAS India

Go out into nature. It is only when you love and appreciate something that you can conserve it. — Kalyan Varma, Nature inFocus

The ban on plaster-of-Paris Ganesha idols is a welcome change. — Murali Bhoj, clay potter

Mother Nature is the answer to all woes and every cure is rooted to the ground. — Smitha Shetty, trainer

A majority of the champions in sustainability efforts happen to be women. — Sandeep Anirudhan, Aikyam

The major problem with cloud-seeding is that there’s no established mechanism to verify and determine the success of the technique. — HS Shivaramu, Gandhi Krishi Vidyalaya Kendra

India will go from a data-poor country to a data-rich one in three years. — Nandan Nilekani, UIDAI

Eventually, it’s a good blend of data and intuition that helps businesses drive growth. — Chetan Alsisaria, Polestar Solutions

The digitisation wave that has swept through the country will transform the way employee screening is done in the country. — Rahul Belwalkar, SecUR Credentials

People say you will find love because of a match-making algorithm. We don’t believe that. — Didier Rappaport, Happn

Financial crisis can never be a hurdle in chasing your passion if the determination within you is strong. — Rupanti Munda, Homeless World Cup player

Lots of things are possible, you just need the bravery to try. — Tenzing Bodosa

Scaling a company is a great exercise in learning – you have to continue to learn and unlearn with each new stage. — David Blake, Degreed

You’re not just marketing but you’re building an organisation and an army of customers. — Vartika Verma, CREO

The difference between a marketing campaign and election campaign is that in the latter there’s no prize for coming second. — Arvind Gupta, Digital India Foundation

Entrepreneurship is the driving force of the Indian economy. — Wolfgang Will, Lufthansa

Our traction is one-tenth that of China, which is alarming. — TC Meenakshisundaram, IDG Ventures

Individuals in India own roughly two percent of the total market capitalisation of the domestic stock market as compared to 15-18 percent in large economies like the US and Europe. — Harsh Vardhan Singh, Tauro Wealth

Mentoring is at the core of the value that incubators and accelerators provide. And mentoring is the weakest link. — Ajeet Khurana

If I build it where they are, they’ll come faster. — Vikram Upadhyaya, GHV Accelerator

In the attempt to free teams from doing regular work during hackathons, most companies have people building toy projects that never see the light of day. — Satej Sirur, Rocketium

Entrepreneurship, like life, is a roller-coaster journey of success and failure. You have to pick yourself up each time and move forward. — Pratheek Thomas, Kokaachi

33% of all immigrant-founded companies in the US have Indian founders. — Kauffman Foundation report

An experience starts from the very first interaction. — Narayan Menon, Wanderlust

In India, it is becoming important and imperative to create a mindset that works towards making things from scratch. — Amitabh Kant, Niti Aayog

In today’s world, the softer skills, attributes, and the ability to hone them for business impact create a competitive advantage. — Amit Dua, ValueAppz

You can’t always find your passion within you, you have to get out there and look for it. — Ramya Sriram, The Tap

Don’t chase valuation, chase the right partner. A right partner is worth more than just a 10 percent increase in valuation. — Anant Daga, W

A lot of companies are living off investor money and will take a long time to break even. — Mohandas Pai, Aarin Capital

Much of the startup boom remains in the e-commerce space rather than in the manufacturing space. — V. Raghunathan, Schulich School of Business

If all the students in India made a new country, it would be the fourth most populous nation in the world—of the same population as the entire United States! — Raghav Podar, Podar World School

If you don’t have powerful teachers who can encourage children, everything becomes less meaningful. — Bindu Subramaniam, SAPA

Fortunately and perhaps not too soon, India has started recognising the importance of hands-on, experiential learning. — Ramji Raghavan, Agastya International Foundation

Learn English to annihilate caste. — Savitribai Phule

They say that if you stitch a piece of cloth incorrectly, it can be mended, but you cannot return someone’s skin.— Laxmi Agarwal, acid attack survivor

Just look around, there’s always someone who needs help, and you’ll always have a way to be able to help. — Damayanti Tanna

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. — Margaret Mead

The magic that will happen is beyond any planning. — Nandita Abraham, Pearl Academy

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).