‘An IPO is not the end but actually the beginning’ – 50 quotes from India’s No.1 startup conference, TechSparks 2019

StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week. Drawn from our special coverage of the recent flagship TechSparks 2019 conference, here are 50 gems of insight from a star-studded lineup of speakers. See also our earlier compilations of quotes from conference editions in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

Share these quotes with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our photo showcase of the startups that exhibited at TechSparks 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016, and profiles of the top Tech30 startups over the years: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.

Bread is not new, a knife is not new, but when you put it together, slicing is new, and that’s innovation. - KT Prasad, Zendesk India

As startups, we have great ideas and innovative product roadmaps, but it’s all about how you execute against what you want to do. - Adrit Raha, Vivant

Entrepreneurs have a ‘get up and go’ and inspirational type of energy. However, the energy that builds large companies is an institutional energy. - William Bissell, FabIndia

A is 'additional value', B is 'barrier to entry', C is 'customer experience', and D is 'demand'. - Sruthi Kannan, Cisco

Founders must understand that they are selling to a person. They are selling to a persona. They are selling it to a personality trait. - Shashi Maurya, Netcore

Sales comprises four key elements ⁠— it drives livelihood, creates joy, creates customer value, and economic growth. - Amit Agarwal, Manthan

You need to have a good tracking system because customers are tech-savvy. - Suraj Saharan, Delhivery

Entrepreneurs must understand that it is very important to use face-to-face conversations to attract customers. - Casey Clegg, PubNub

The product that one is offering forms the foundation of the brand. Focusing on changing people’s perception comes at a later stage. - Meeta Malhotra, The Hard Copy

Platform has nothing to do with your ability or inability to build a brand. It really depends on the consumer need. If there is an opportunity in the market, you will surely build the brand. - Abhay Hanjura, Licious

One critical skill that a good founder and a good team should have is building relationships. - Angela De Giacomo, Bissell Family Office

Founders need to understand who they are solving for, and what difference they are making in their lives. This holds good not just in the initial days of a company but also in the later stages. - Amod Malviya, Udaan

Being a social media influencer is like an athlete’s career. You will be out of form sometimes and in form at others. - Ranveer Allahbadia, BeerBiceps Media

If you play the game of ridiculing just to feel good about yourself, it's the worst kind of fuel to get. - Kunal Shah, Cred

Birds cannot fly if they just have one wing. In the same way, women and men have to work together to reach some goals. - Pooja Khemka, Myskoolbus

Every corporate wants to become a startup and every startup wants to become a corporate. - Avnish Sabharwal, Accenture

There is a phenomenal opportunity for enterprises and startups to coexist. - Pavan Cheruvu, Oracle

Any organisation, which does not realise that there is talent in-house, is missing out on a lot of things. - Pankaj Bagri, Target

A leader will have the ability to think imaginatively, take a holistic approach and create a fine balance between intuition and rational thinking. - Madhurima Agarwal, NetApp Excellerator

What founders have to keep in mind is that an IPO is not the end but actually the beginning. - Nithin Kamath, Zerodha

Unfortunately, capital is not infinite. At some point in time, money will stop coming. Startups need to be self-sustainable. - Rutvik Doshi, Inventus Capital Partners

Most startups are on their own. You don’t start a company for a VC, you start it for yourself and your community. - Arti Sinha, Wayu Health

Infusing confidence in stakeholders becomes tricky when the market is unexplored and still evolving. - Ajith Mohan Karimpana, Furlenco

India’s Silicon Valley has transformed from a pensioners’ paradise to founders’ paradise. Earlier, people came here to retire. Today they are coming here to start up. - Dr C N Ashwathnarayan, Karnataka DCM

It is also the right time for spacetech companies to come up in India because of the infrastructural support, and the requirement by the ecosystem is being met. - Yashash Karanam, Bellatrix

The Indian market hasn’t seen many new-age companies getting listed. But we will see them soon. - Munish Varma, SoftBank Investment Advisers

Many billion-dollar brands are going to be built in the next 10 years, and it is going to start with digital. - Rajan Anandan, Sequoia Capital

Today, you can build anything in India. If you're an Indian entrepreneur, you can get a meeting with any investor in the world. - Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm

Today, there are no Indian brands on a global scale and it’s not because we couldn’t do it, the stars just didn’t align. - Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola

While UPI has made it possible to transact money across India free of cost, people will soon want to transact money globally too, free of cost. - Sumit Gupta, CoinDCX

This year, product ecommerce is going to be anywhere between $27 billion to $30 billion; five years from today, it would touch $80 billion. And 70 percent of that increase would come from Tier II and III towns. - Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Flipkart

The current generation has a consumerist ideology. They want to go on that big holiday or buy the latest gadget without having to wait to save the entire amount. - Gaurav Chopra, IndiaLends

What’s exciting about where healthtech has reached today in India is the amount of funding coming into this sector. - Anjana Sasidharan, Sequoia

Health is an emotional experience. You cannot have one healthy meal and be done with it – health has to be present in every stage of life. - Jyotsna Pattabiraman, Grow Fit

Till the 1980s, it was a medical myth that once you are an adult, your brain cannot change. - Kumaar Bagrodia, NeuroLeap

There is a big middle-class in India. They have no answer to death, disease, and disability. - Yashish Dahiya, Policybazaar

Technology is meant to grow the size of the pie and bring in efficiency. Use it with that length, and don’t use it to kill profit pools, employment, and innovation. - Sameer Nigam, PhonePe

Deep tech is opening up new roles everyday. - Swapan Rajdev, Haptik

Deep tech is 'wow' tech. Today, computing power has changed so much that the way data is processed has also changed. - Swapna Gupta, Qualcomm Ventures

In reality, in the initial few days of the scaling, process is extremely challenging as you throw people and software processes at it. - Dale Vaz, Swiggy

A small part of being able to tackle this complexity is anticipating complexity ahead of time. - Dhruv Kapoor, Zilingo

Ninety-five percent of building and running a startup is a miserable experience. It’s hard work, you constantly face rejection, you are living in fear. - Arti Sinha, Wayu Health

Never take any shutdown as a failure; it is a journey. One needs to enjoy this journey. Be curious and become a problem solver. - Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Ninjacart

The first step is saying ‘Yes I have failed’, embracing it, learning it and moving on. - Pragya Misra Mehrishi, WhatsApp

What saves the day is a shared sense of purpose and vision. - Hari Vasudev, Walmart Labs

Keep honest critics who will always tell you what is going wrong with you. - Rajkummar Rao

You just learn from mistakes and keep moving forward. - Manu Jain, Xiaomi India

You have to develop strong resilience and the ability to get back up after a failure. - Akash Saxena, Hotstar

You should not repeat the mistakes. Entrepreneurship is like going to uncharted territories, whether mines or gutters, you don't know. - Naveen Tewari, InMobi

Even if there is one percent chance to do something, you should always go for it because that one percent can change your life. - Priyanshi Choubey, Instacar

We might fail, we might succeed, but tomorrow people will at least remember us for trying something new. - Taapsee Pannu

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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