‘Valuation is vanity’ – 40 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 40 gems and insights from the week of December 9-15 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our compilation of 50 Quotes from Techsparks 2019 here.

Everyone deserves recognition as a human being. - Ratan Tata

There will be times in life when someone comes along to give you a wake-up call, and get you out of your shell. - Nikhil Kumar, IndiaStack

You never know who influences you and in what way – that’s the beauty of all our lives. - Nikhita Gandhi

Life is about having an open mind and being aware that everyone is equal and thus being biased or narrow-minded is unnecessary. - Krystyna Devina Lason

Holding on is believing that there's only a past; letting go is knowing that there's a future. - Daphne Rose Kingma

Staying ahead is harder than getting ahead. - Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman of Hero Enterprises

India has become hugely data-rich, even before it has become rich. - Amitabh Kant, NITI Aayog

We are in the most exciting phase of e-governance in the history of India. Information technology is bringing a great transformation in the governance spectrum. - Gagan Rai, NSDL e-Governance

The MSME sector is the core engine of the Indian economy and there is a need to create compelling solutions for MSMEs to thrive. - Sameer Nigam, PhonePe

For any SME with ambition, there are two critical parameters: growth and sustainability. - Mihir Mehta, Ashika Group

The accelerated growth of the Indian video entertainment ecosystem has had an unprecedented impact on the consumer. - Varun Narang, Hotstar

This is the time to discover B2B startups in India whose innovations can be applied on a global scale. - Sajan Pillai, Season Two Ventures

Majority of businesses in India, whether traditional or new age, continue to be offline driven, requiring high touch human intervention at most stages of the value chain. - Gurpreet Singh, Awign

If you want to solve for the next billion you need to find a livelihood problem or a survival problem. - Nikunj Parashar, Sagar Defence

For India to become a $5 trillion economy, manufacturing has to be at the forefront. - Amrit Acharya, Zetwerk

The future of Indian retail is, and must be, local. - Akansha Hazari-Ericson, m.Paani

It’s very difficult for an emerging market to copy the US model and localise it because the stage of development is different for different countries. - Hans Tung, GGV Capital

Channelising VC money into “Bharat” is the need of the hour. - Anupam Jalote, iCreate

India is the third-largest air travelling country in the world. - Boris Zha, HappyEasyGo

There is a massive difference between learning and speaking English. With most apps or even in schools, one is taught to read the language but not much emphasis is put on how to speak. - Manit Parikh, ELSA

Music students have zero assistance when they practice on their own post their sessions with the guru. - Gopala Krishna Koduri, MusicMuni Labs

AI and cognitive computing puts a face on the often impersonal online world. Instead of being fed overused, canned responses, live chat connects customers to real people. - Sheshgiri Kamath, Kapture CRM

Logistics needs full transformation similar to what happened in accounts 30 years ago with SAP, Tally, Oracle and in marketing and sales with Salesforce. - Varun Biyani, SuperProcure

Retail 4.0 has led to a transformation of the supply chain as a competitive differentiator and enabler of strategic growth. - Sunil Munshi, Denave

Blockchain is a great asset as it helps in tracking the product’s lifecycle and tenure transfer from source to store shelf. - Abhishek Bansal, Shadowfax

Legacy speech analytics systems are simply not meeting the needs of the world’s top brands. - Swapnil Jain, Observe.ai

There are two kinds of engineers: one scared of hard problems and others who get excited about solving them. - Jyoti Bansal, Harness

Most restaurants don’t know what it costs to make a dish; their pricing is unscientific and arbitrary, leaving money on the table on each sale. - Vinodh Rajaraman, EagleOwl

Astronomy is not a subject that is well integrated in the education system today. - Aryan Mishra, Spark Astronomy

Arts is the most important way of staying in touch with oneself in a meaningful manner. - Kristine Michael, SAF

Once you pass out of college you must challenge yourself and be curious all the time for the rest of your life. - Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS

If we support the natural talents of children, they can do wonders. - Piyush Rathi

The intersection of need and opportunity is about people. - Geeta Goel, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation India

Successful education products aren’t built purely around information dissemination. - Zishaan Hayath, Toppr

To build a business that has scale, the team needs to be truly inclusive, diverse in its approach, fertile for innovation and ready to bring about disruption. - Neiharika Rajiv, Suvida

We have used and abused single-use plastic, creating havoc in our water bodies and are rapidly pushing marine life towards mass extinction. - Kaushiq Kodithodi, Jellyfish Watersports

We need to become attentive to our consumption. We can make a huge difference by saying no to single-use plastic items. - Dia Mirza

The human race is a winner when people are more competitive in the right spirit. - Mithun Prabhu

The perplexity of the current reward ecosystem is that there are too many. - Amit Sharma, Twid

You have to do whatever it takes to get to your first ten customers. The first million dollars is about how do you triple that money from there. - Ashu Garg, Foundation Capital

All you have in life is your reputation, which you have to zealously protect. - Richard Branson

Valuation is vanity. That number is going to keep changing with every round, but what will not change is the percentage of ownership. - Tarun Davda, Matrix India

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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