‘Skills will be the new currency in the post-pandemic world’ – 20 quotes from India’s COVID-19 struggle

Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week. This special series of compilations focuses on India’s COVID-19 struggle (see last week’s post here). Share these quotes and excerpts with your networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

 We need to understand that recovery doesn’t happen overnight, but we are seeing positivity. Now, with the second wave, the mood has been dampened. - Sumant Rampal, HDFC Bank

Despite a robust reduction in new COVID-19 cases and the start of vaccine roll-out, India's 2021 economic output is expected to remain below the 2019 level. - UNESCAP report

Sharing of knowledge and best practices globally helped manage the COVID-19 outbreak, and subsequently in the development of vaccines. - Sujit Sahoo, Trianz

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The pandemic has essentially shut down the events industry and thrown all business models out the window. - Jatin Varma, Comic Con

It's amazing how one was completely isolated physically, but yet at once was connected to a world of fellow artists online. - Joanne DeBrass, Chitra Santhe

Another consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic has been that due to the lockdown, it has become increasingly difficult to film content. - Issay Yoshida, EmbodyMe

After a year of lockdowns, it is clear that innovation is paramount for survival, and managing critical knowledge is required for innovation. - Rajesh Dhillon, KMSG

What COVID-19 has pushed us all into rethinking is the importance of discipline and institutions that offer the scaffolding on which our ideas take shape and yield results. - Pavan Soni, Inflexion Point

The pandemic has created a wave of both creativity and urgency in remote learning. - C. Krishnakumari, Afcons Infrastructure

Agile cocreation approaches have increased during the pandemic, especially virtual facilitation. - Arthur Shelley, Intelligent Answers

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The pandemic forced higher education institutions to go online. It also led to the proliferation of upskilling platforms and institutes that improve employee skills for better job prospects. - Anirudh A Damani, Artha Venture Fund

With large-scale layoffs caused by the sudden economic crisis, platform-based contractual employment is the most significant disruption in the labour market that we have witnessed in a long time. - Praveen Madire, Techfynder

The pandemic has also showed us the possibilities and accelerated our learning curve. Therefore, we will have blended forms that will focus on learning rather than remote teaching and information dissemination. - Sourav Mukherji, Chairperson, IIMB

In the post-COVID era, social media is the primary channel through which brands will interact with their audience. - Anurag Avula, Shopmatic

Throughout the pandemic, we have seen how consumers spend time at home and how much they value access to great media content. - Seline Sangsook Han, Samsung Electronics

Since the global pandemic, the need to establish an online presence via social commerce platforms has aggravated aggressively, especially in Tier II and III cities. - Venkat J, Woovly

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, retailers have managed to reinvent their strategies and adopt a holistic approach. - Samarth Agrawal, MaxWholesale

This is a good time to re-evaluate and remove processes and non-value adding activities. - Ramesh Menon, HT Media

Skills will be the new currency in the post-pandemic world. - Ahmed Mazhari, Microsoft Asia

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).