‘It is a trap to be satisfied; one always needs to change the status quo’ – 50 quotes from Indian startup journeys
From creativity to change, witness the memorable journey of Indian entrepreneurship in these quotes, excerpts, and stories.
Launched in 2014, 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 July 1-7 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our compilation of Top 50 Quotes from 2018 here.
It's not about being fake. It's just about allowing the negative mental chatter to become positive and empowering. - Janki Ravani, House of Happiness
Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success. - Arianna Huffington
Believe the voice in your head telling you to just do it, even if everyone else discourages you. - Tanaz Mohammed, Mumbai City Football Club
Customer feedback has a lasting, wide-ranging impact on improving organisational performance. - Sanjay Shenoy, PixelTrack
Valuing startups is part-science and part-experience. - Saurav Banerjee, Kalaari Capital
If you are too fast you will burn a lot of money. And if you are not fast enough, you lose market share. - Elmar Degenhart, Continental AG
Money management isn’t about being perfect. It’s about doing your best and making adjustments as you move along. - Nidhika Bahl, ‘The Queen Of The Comeback’
The Indian economy will grow to become a $3 trillion economy in the current year. It is now the sixth-largest in the world. - Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
The government’s focus on electric mobility and EVs in Budget 2019 is inspiring. - Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola
Support should be provided to leverage programmes like Startup Visa and Exchange Programmes to learn from other leading ecosystems of the world. - Murali Talasila, PwC India
The new dedicated startup channel to be operated by the Doordarshan Group will encourage people in the remotest parts of the country to take the path the entrepreneurship. - Meena Ganesh, Portea Medical
Investments in skills and education can be directly mapped to a country’s commitment to economic growth. - Vineet Chaturvedi, Edureka
Two sectors where India needs to focus if we want to become a $5 trillion economy by 2022 is agriculture and small scale manufacturing. - Alok Patnia, Taxmantra
India’s online economy has made significant strides, shifting from a largely ‘cash-on-delivery’ model to now clocking a massive number of online digital transactions. - Bhavin Turakhia, Zeta & Flock
Entrepreneurship is no longer a big-city phenomenon. This is a pan-India movement and awakening. - Vaibhav Agrawal, Lightspeed Venture Partners
The right regulatory atmosphere and legal framework will give the challenging landscape of Indian healthcare, a new lease of life. - Pradeep Dadha, Netmeds
The growth in dual income households is creating a pain-point in the availability of quality, affordable food. - Anirudh Damani, AVF
From no single Indian institute in top 200 universities ranking until five years ago, we now have three institutions in the top 200 global institutions bracket. - Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
Employees in India are looking forward to picking up new-age skills to make themselves more relevant in the current workforce. - Ronnie Screwvala, upGrad
To make EVs affordable, batteries must be produced in India, and extensively tested to cope with Indian weather conditions. - Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar, Aeris India
90 percent of $500 billion food and grocery market is served by 10 million unorganised small retailers. - Vipul Patel, CIIE Initiatives
India has been lacking in many fronts when it comes to the cervical cancer space, especially in rural areas. - Adarsh Natarajan, Aindra
While everyone focussed on the youth as a growing demographic, most people failed to acknowledge India’s fast-growing senior citizens population. - Ayush Agrawal, Seniority
India has seen the rise of over 40,000 startups, which have created more than $130 billion of value from January 2014 to September 2018. - Siddarth Pai, 3one4 Capital
By 2020, around 650 million Indians will be online, and every aspect of their life will be digital. - Prashasta Seth, IIFL AMC
India houses 10 percent of the world's gamers and this number is slated to rise exponentially. - Uday Sodhi, Sony Pictures Networks India
India overtook China as the largest producer of two wheelers (23 million in 2017-18). - Saurabh Sharma, SucSEED
Education financing is a massive under-served opportunity in India where a tiny percentage of students have access to bank credit. - Ritesh Banglani, Stellaris Venture Partners
The state's government should act on promoting techniques like greenhouse farming for small-holder farmers, micro-irrigation, and other climate-smart farming techniques. - Sathya Raghu, Kheyti
In an increasingly digitised business landscape, it would only make sense for SMEs to go the ‘digital way’ in order to achieve optimal levels of productivity and scalable growth. - Pravin P Daryani, A&A Business Consulting
It is essential for SMEs to identify where the demand for their product truly lies in international markets instead of choosing already saturated markets. - RS Subramanian, DHL Express India
With limited finances, MSMEs in India fail to explore the myriad of opportunities which social media marketing offers. - Jayati Singh, Tally Solutions
The impact of heat stress on labour productivity is a serious consequence of climate change. - Catherine Saget, ILO
With the current crippling water crisis, rejuvenating water bodies, growing water-efficient crops, and recycling waste water are possible ways to avoid the recurrence of such an acute water crisis in future. - Vishwanath Srikantaiah
It’s time more people join the cause of making this planet livable for the next thousands of years. - Vinamra Pandiya, Qtrove.com
Simple freezing leads to the formation of large ice crystals in the cells of the product, thereby leading to loss of nutrients, texture, and taste. - Mithun Appaiah, Innovative Foods
Users do not need to have a PhD in data science or ML or be a mathematics expert to build something. - Gabe Hollombe, AWS
What if data scientists could acquire external data within minutes, instead of the months it takes right now? - Varun Banka, Atlan
People should be limited only by their imagination and not tools. The best data scientists are the ones who start with a problem to solve and use data as a tool. - Shantanu Bhattacharya, Locus.sh
Using the data from benchmarked previous projects, managers would be able to run sophisticated analyses using AI to forecast the timelines of the next activity in the construction cycle. - Sameer Dhanrajani, Fractal Analytics
Broad AI can learn across different disciplines and augment human intelligence. This will unleash the power of AI to transform the world in dramatic ways. - Gargi Dasgupta, IBM
In today’s day and age, it’s no more about the big beating the small – it’s about the fast beating the slow. - Nithin Kamath, Zerodha
Without an ecosystem, there is no way an idea can be discovered and shaped to succeed. - Kaarthick Balakrishnan, Cultiv8
The perception of health and hygiene sells. - Sagar Daryani, Wow! Momo
Youngsters have a number of opportunities to save more, and achieve more. - Priyanka Dhavale, Invest N Rich
Everyone wants work-life balance, so employers should shape a differentiated experience to attract the best talent. - Paul D’Arcy, Indeed
The world is sometimes too harsh to deserve hundred percent honest people. - Yash Hisaria, St. D’vencé
Hustle hard. As an entrepreneur you will have to work 10x harder than everybody else. - Malini Agarwal, ‘MissMalini’
It doesn't matter the relative hours you're spending, but the quality of time matters more. - Amit Agarwal, Amazon India
If each one of us can take it upon ourselves to do our bit to the society, the world will become a much better place. - Sanjana Runwal, Clean-Up Foundation
It is a trap to be satisfied; one always needs to change the status quo. - David Gurlé, Symphony
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).
