‘Frustration is the genesis of entrepreneurship’ – 55 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 55 gems and insights from the week of January 13-19 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our compilation of Top Entrepreneurship Quotes of 2019 here.

A good manager knows what seems unimportant today becomes a bigger demon tomorrow. - Tulsi Swamy, Prime Venture Partners

There’s no better validation for what you are building, than customers telling their friends and family to sign up. - Hena Mehta, Basis

Don’t get attached to what you create. The customer can reject you in an hour. - Kishore Biyani, Future Group

Last-mile delivery is the key to creating a positive impact on the consumer’s mind. - Farooq Adam, Fynd

Nowadays, consumers are more inclined to the organised sector as they are more brand conscious and are willing to spend more for the right product. - Bhagwandas Malani, Centuary Mattresses

When you have a great team, it helps free up your time to focus more on the overarching goals and strategy than day-to-day activities. - Akshaara Lalwani, Communicate India

One mistake that most first-time entrepreneurs make is that they try to do the functionality of one use case and not for a larger pilot. - Ananth Nagaraj, Gnani.ai

Distribution is queen - today, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get ‘discovered’ on social media. - Anmol Garg, Sales5X

Business has to now fully embrace stakeholder capitalism, which means not only maximising profits. - Klaus Schwab, WEF

Development issues cannot be contained within national boundaries. - Medha Patkar

Research takes a long time but you cannot divorce academia from the rest of life. - Shrinivas Kulkarni, Caltech

Every sunrise sector goes through a boom and bust. - Avnish Bajaj, Matrix India

One success, one winner can pay for dozens and dozens of failures. - Jeff Bezos, Amazon

It is difficult to learn from success. - GSK Velu, Trivitron Healthcare

Life comes with highs and with highs come lows. We just have to accept it, deal with it and move on. - Anjali Saraogi, ultramarathon runner

Global organisations are shifting their spend from legacy singular HR tools to data-driven, intelligent talent experience platforms. - Mahe Bayireddi, Phenom People

Physical has its own advantages and nuances and digital has its own. Both of them came in different eras and they will meet. - Kishore Biyani, Future Group

Technology is blind and you have the ability to solve the first barrier, which is social. - Shalini Puchalapalli, Amazon India

There are two key factors to consider when it comes to deploying any new technology: first is security, and second, the ease of use. - Zac Cheah, PundiX

Today’s teachers are very tech-savvy and use technology for a variety of needs. The struggle is that they have to juggle between multiple tools to solve these needs. - Deepanshu Arora, Toddle

The true potential of internet lies in search, as huge corpus of knowledge has limited value if one cannot find information from it when one needs it. - Padma Priya Gaggara, Microsoft

There has been a rapid rise in the number of fantasy game buffs and it has the potential to establish a new age of gaming. - Saurabh Chopra, Ballebaazi.com

We need to sit down and come out with ethics governing the facial recognition as it is an issue that the people all over the world are grappling with. - Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys

Artificial intelligence and machine Learning technologies have become new trends in the HR industry. - Yogita Tulsiani, iXceed Solutions

AI and ML is not good-to-have but must-have. - Kabir Rastogi, Delhivery

With voice-activated search, the experience of researching and booking travel has the potential to become quicker and easier than ever before. - Sameer Dhanrajani

Millennials are a digital-first generation who are reshaping the world’s economy, pushing companies to reexamine the way they do business. - Sujith Narayanan, epiFi

The addressable market for MSME financing is massive. - Alok Mittal, Indifi Technologies

Education marketing is going through a paradigm shift. Education sector spending is growing at 18 percent. The CAGR is expected to reach $30 billion by 2025. - Abhishek Ballabh, ExtraaEdge

SaaS is gaining more of the new spending, although licensed-based software will still be purchased and its use expanded through 2023. - John-David Lovelock, Gartner

India provides a perfect platform for virtual tournaments with an audience of more than 100 million gamers to offer. - Soham Thacker, Gamerji

Digital India has given a huge boost to even the smallest of entrepreneurs, but they still lack training and the right skill set to use the digital medium in the most effective ways. - Ila Kapoor Chaddah, Ziba by Hand

The vitamin and health supplements market is ripe for disruption and presents a huge market opportunity in India. - Deepak Shahdadpuri, DSG Consumer Partners

The entrepreneurial energy of startups is rising well beyond the known metropolitan hubs and is remarkably high in Tier II cities, despite the obvious challenges. - Lathika Pai, Microsoft

Better connectivity, more awareness and higher purchasing power of people in small cities are powering teens’ new-found identity as consumers. - Dipali Mathur Dayal, The Natturel and Kool

The positive trend of fast-growing Indian towns and smaller cities on the global landscape is certainly attracting the attention of cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated. - J Kesavardhanan, K7 Computing

There is massive unmet demand for high-quality food commodities in India. - Akash Sharma, TechnifyBiz

In India, we love our celebrities and our desire to connect with them and make them part of our lives is unparalleled compared to any other part of the world. - Mahesh Gogineni, WYSH

India is still in its infancy in the organic food space and we have a long way to go before we witness a revolution. - Yatan Ahluwalia, Valley View Organic Orchard

The global logistics market is ripe for change. India is a huge market with unique infrastructure challenges; this represents a promising opportunity for local startups. - Lak Ananth, Next47

Building a consumer brand in India is not easy given the size and number of consumers in this country. While the potential is unlimited, so are the challenges. - Arjun Vaidya, Dr. Vaidya

Bengaluru has served as India's technology capital for over three decades now. - Prashant Prakash, Accel

I would love to see a Bangladeshi immigrant who comes to India and creates the next unicorn in India or becomes the next CEO of Infosys. - Satya Nadella, Microsoft

A common mistake that investors and entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia make is that they look at this as one region, but it is not one region. - Jenny Lee, GGV Capital

All of us want to be healthy. But it is tough for us to follow a routine and regime. - Vikas Bansal, Cure.fit

Differentiation is going to come from innovation, and innovation comes from the power of the human mind. - N R Narayana Murthy, Infosys

Artworks are conversations, and they provide confidence as well as satisfaction. - Naveen Pattar

Art and culture see no boundaries. People connect at different levels beyond socio-political borders. - Sandhya Singh Parmar, Art Beyond Borders

One of the hardest things that humans do is tell riveting, engaging, inspiring stories. When you get it right, it's a lever that can change the world. - Jeff Bezos, Amazon

In India, art is not just a luxury. It is a belief system and celebration that empowers our country. - Sonu Mulchandani, e-Studio

Growth is about celebrating difference and is also about accepting the grey shades in life. - Anirban ‘Onor’ Dhar

This constant competitive battle engulfs us in a “me-focused” mindset as we grow up, rather than a “we-focused” one. - Rahul Adhikari, International Changemaker Olympiad

Make a product as best as you can without worrying about the result. – Ravi Gupta, Gargee Designer

Organisations now want to use paper-based packaging materials so they can promote themselves as green companies. - Gaurav Jalan, Packman Packaging

Giving back need not be a CSR activity, to be done only after a certain scale of revenue and profits. - Anurakt Jain, Klub

If you want to be an actor or a stylist or a producer, don’t be in it for the end result. Be in it for the process! - Rhea Kapoor, Rheson

You need to have an open mind, but also a prepared mind, one which absorbs things that are important by thorough research and understanding. - Prashant Prakash, Accel India

Your mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive. - Tanvi Malik, FabAlley

Frustration is the genesis of entrepreneurship. - Bhavin Turakhia, Zeta

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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