‘Every saree has a story’ – 45 quotes from Indian startup journeys

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 45 gems and insights from the week of July 22-28 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.

Don't wait; the time will never be right. You have to be extremely determined to pursue your dream. - Chinu Kala, Rubans Accessories

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’! - Audrey Hepburn

Every day is a learning day. - Gaurav Aggarwal, One Life India

The nature of the entrepreneur is more important than discussing opportunities in the industry. - Balram Nair, The Chennai Angels

Perseverance has no replacement. Remembering that there is always light at the end of the tunnel and continuously investing in the same direction for a long period of time is very important. - Ritesh Agarwal, OYO

Do what you like to do, and do something where you feel you can put your heart, soul, and entire energy into. Be determined, plan it seriously, and make your life worth living. - Pawan Kumar, Cessna Lifeline Veterinary Care Clinic

You only live once, so don’t wait; just go ahead and start up. - Vidya Santhanam, Fitbots

Your personal opinion or passion should not override your business sense. Everyone makes mistakes, but one must have continuous review system in place so that corrective actions are swift. - Abhay Kewadkar, Tetrad Global Beverages

Though friendship with your business partner is surely a boon, you should not let it lull you into a state of passivity. - Peeush Bajpai, SpringPeople

Choosing the best performance appraisal method will ensure a healthy work environment. - Sanjay Shenoy, PixelTrack

By solving the bottlenecks associated with informational and social collaboration overload, you can reduce personal burnout and give productivity and morale a much-needed boost. - Shristi Verma, Crrux

Remote working is here to stay, and companies that embrace remote working as a viable option will see a 10 percent increase in employee retention by 2020. - Shyamal Parikh, SmartTask

When you are coding, you have to think about how you can make its usage simpler to the end user. - Pitt Huang, Pundi X

The unique thing about on-demand is that your own needs will change according to the time and location. - Dale Vaz, Swiggy

Dining out constitutes about 70 percent of a restaurant’s total business. - Gaurav Gupta, Zomato

It is an innate habit of every Indian household to get milk delivered in the morning. - Sagar Yarnalkar, DailyNinja

In a high-growth market like India, B2C needs very large, deep-pocketed investors. - Bhaskar Majumdar, Unicorn India Ventures

Payments are one natural thing that will help accelerate businesses. - Will Cathcart, WhatsApp

Payments is not a simple domain. You can’t just build an app and launch. - Harshil Mathur, Razorpay

There is an opportunity to bring efficiencies into the B2B payments supply chain via richer data and automated processes. - TR Ramachandran, Visa

Trade finance is an age-old paper-based industry dominated by banks that primarily focus on large, established corporate customers. - Pushkar Mukewar, Drip Capital

Today’s banking and fintech ecosystem requires cloud-native, privacy-aware, inherently secure, API-first banking and payment solutions. - Bhavin Turakhia, Zeta

In India, only the top 10 percent get formal credit and when you look at the unfulfilled need for the rest, the market opportunity is huge. - Puneet Agarwal, Money View

All paper is sourced from trees, but you can create paper from anything that has cellulose. - Kavya Madappa, Bluecat Paper

After decades of being excluded from the marketplace, the global poor are gaining fast entry into the world of digital consumption. - Payal Arora, ‘The Next Billion Users’

Poor gender diversity among top-tier technical talent is a widely acknowledged and big problem among leading companies. - Santanu Paul, TalentSprint

It’s important to build an ecosystem around you. If women can build companies, they can build a support ecosystem too. - Aakanksha Bhargava, PM Relocations

Motherhood teaches you the value of time. - Pallavi Jain, Instalocate

Cancer is not a death sentence. The only way to beat cancer is to accept the reality, embrace the pain, and find the courage to move forward, one day at a time. - Megha Ahuja, Sashakt

Conflicts between one’s internal reality and the way the world is can be a source of major distress. - Mahesh Natarajan

Without the discipline of meaningful market-based competition, digital platforms may act in ways that are not responsive to consumer demands. - Makan Delrahim, Antitrust Division

Collecting data is not enough unless all the systems are interoperable and healthcare professionals are computer-literate, and willing to share data without violating any security protocol. - Ramesh Byrapaneni, Endiya Partners

Globally, most countries are thinking of data protection; there are very few countries that have built a data empowerment architecture. - Nandan Nilekani

Why are we not the cheapest producer of 5G equipment, cubesats, jet engines, sensors, and solar panels? A version of the listed technologies has probably been worked in Chandrayaan-2. - Jatin Singh, Skymet Weather Services

Both online and offline channels are expected to contribute to the increasing sales of smartphones. - Madhav Sheth, Realme

There are so many smartphones in the country and the dial screen is the most underutilised advertising screen. It has a lot of potential and can be monetised better. - Jitendra Chaturvedi, Batooni

The youth of this country is the most important resource. - KP Krishnan, MSDE

Nobody enjoys driving their own car in Bengaluru traffic. - Deepesh Agarwal, MoveInSync

Growing urbanisation in Delhi-NCR is driving demand for transportation, including first and last-mile services, placing a greater burden on the environment. - Shinichiro Omachi, Mitsui

Sustainable mobility is the need of the hour. - CP Gurnani, Tech Mahindra

India's low per-capita car ownership affords the chance to pursue a different model from the western world. Our emphasis must be shared, connected electric transportation. - Amitabh Kant, Niti Aayog

AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our time and has the potential to help solve many of our world’s most pressing challenges. - Satya Nadella, Microsoft

AI, ML, data science - all are in demand. India is short of a few hundred thousand data scientists right now. - Rahul Sharma, AWS

In India, we see conversational AI solutions being adopted significantly for the vernacular user base. - Aakrit Vaish, Haptik

For deep tech startups to emerge out of India, there has to be a strong partnership between industry, academia, and investors. - Naganand Doraswamy, Ideaspring Capital

India stands at an inflexion point of an S-shaped consumption curve, where discretionary consumer spending will increase disproportionately with the increase in the national GDP. - Ankit Agarwal, Innoven Capital

Rural innovators are solving real-life problems affecting the masses. - Viiveck Verma, TEDxHyderabad

Predicting which product will be a hit is one of the toughest parts of a retail business. - Sreejita Deb, Flyrobe

Every saree has a story. - Pallavi Mohadikar, Karagiri

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).

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