‘Conversations represent the new digital storefront for businesses’ – 50 quotes on digital transformation

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 quotes focus on the increasing impact of digital media in India and around the world (see the previous post here). Share these 50 gems and insights with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

If the industrial revolution solved the problem of speed, the digital revolution has solved the problem of distance. - Shamik Banerjee, Apollo 24|7

Successful virtual leaders have the knowledge, competence, and mindset to lead multicultural virtual teams. - Theresa Sigillito Hollema, 'Virtual Teams Across Cultures'

With users becoming centric to technology, engineers nowadays are not just expected to code but to empathise with their users to build the right code. - Manisha Raisinghani, LogiNext

Cloud makes gaming device-agnostic and far more on-demand. It ensures a gaming ecosystem where the player’s skill purely defines gameplay without device and software capabilities hindrances. - Gagandeep Mahajan, Affine

Over the next decade, we will see lots more women in digital businesses in traditional sectors where they have an edge. - Ratna Mehta, Wadhwani Foundation

With the right digital training and resources, small businesses led by women can create a positive economic footprint for themselves as well as their communities. - Ajit Mohan, Facebook India

The digital revolution especially in local news is creating new and exciting opportunities to serve communities. - Merrill Brown, The News Project

Management of gated communities — residential and commercial — is dominated by fragmented, disaggregated, non-tech savvy, and non-professional service providers. - Sanket Nerkar, Inspacco

Today, preference is growing towards video decks, which are crisp. There is a paucity of time and long emails and decks don’t convey anything. - Shashank Tyagi, GoToPitch

With global crypto-assets over a total worth of $2 trillion, global crypto adoption is far from slowing down. - Nischal Shetty, WazirX

A large number of people are accessing formal credit for the first time in their lives — younger people, people in their first jobs, people working in the unorganised sector. - Lizzie Chapman, ZestMoney

As open banking offers glimpses of the nimble utility that consumers and businesses can avail, India is on the brink of a financial revolution. - Arvind Ronta, Visa

Open banking or open finance will be a big deal going forward and will not only drive digital banking but will also empower neobanks with more capabilities. - Samer Soliman, Arab Financial Services

Neo banking is the fastest-growing vertical within the fintech segment. - Ankur Mittal, Inflection Point Ventures

The banking industry in India often views credit cards as a loan product instead of a high-frequency payment instrument. - Rajan Bajaj, slice

Instrumental in the rise of veganism are influencers who have tapped the young, tech-savvy generation by increasing awareness of the cause through social media. - Siddharth Kothari, Om Kothari Group

The healthcare industry produces massive amounts of data, and it is extremely difficult to bring this data together, convert it into meaningful insights, and bring those insights to the point of care. - Amit Phadnis, GE Healthcare

Mainstream fitness formats can become drab and don’t challenge or inspire people enough to really build a long-term habit of fitness. - Anurag Mundhada, Insane AI

Because of the short crop duration, vegetable farmers need an accurate execution plan backed up with resource availability and knowledge. - Sanjay Borkar, FarmERP

Implementing technology in farming reduces maintenance costs and also enhances crop revenue. - Ashwin Kumar, Vibez Estates

There is an increasing demand for automated QC solutions to drive speed and efficiency in manufacturing. - Sekar Udayamurthy, Jidoka Technologies

What we see on social media to movies recommended on Netflix, or products that are suggested when we are shopping on Amazon, is what we need to adopt in our everyday knowledge management practices to make knowledge services simpler and streamlined. - Patricia Mweene Lumba and Janice Scheckter

It is the need of the hour to enable individuals to develop a deeper understanding of their consumption. - Pallavi Srivastava, Ourbetterplanet

The biggest challenge in the edtech space is keeping the customer acquisition cost down. - Ashish Gupta, Bambinos

Edtech companies are actually helping in making people employable. - Gaurav Perti, PurpleTutor

The availability of a good music teacher in your neighbourhood is still a big problem. - Lakshminarayana Yeluri, Muzigal

The time for disruption in B2B commerce in traditional sectors of the economy was long overdue and has arrived. To take on the challenges of scale and uniqueness of B2B, one must be armed with teams, knowledge, technology and an ability to solve for credit needs. - Asish Mohapatra, OfBusiness

Employability is a very big challenge among Tier-II, Tier-III, and rural youth in India. That, however, presents a major opportunity. - Pradeep Jai Singh, IAN

Since many kirana stores are not run by a larger conglomerate, they do not have the funds to have a full-stack system, which are usually quite expensive. - Ajay Nain, Gully Network

People in Tier III and Tier IV cities are losing out on so many things because of a lack of digital tools and awareness on how to use them to further improve their local economy. - Medarisha Lyngdoh, eSamudaay

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MNCs provide branding services to larger clients, and their one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work for MSMEs. - Ashish Shinde, Empire Media

Investment in CRE has predominantly remained off-limits for most sections of the investor community in India. - Srini Sriniwasan, Kotak Investment Advisors

India is uniquely positioned to capitalise on and propel the SaaS revolution to even greater heights. - Pari Natarajan, Zinnov

Unlike other mature hyper-scale markets, data centres in India require a proactive approach to development and a streamlined delivery process. - Dave Newitt, Yondr Group

The auto repair industry has been in dire need of a tech-enabled player to handle the lack of trust and high cost of repair and service. - Vivek Sharma, Fixcraft

Decentralised and customised [cold storage] solutions, keeping in mind the local needs, are ideal for a vast and diverse country like ours with different climatic zones. - Sujit Kumar Gopinathan, CInI

[The US gamer] audience grew up playing on desktops and consoles, and they understand that games don’t come free. So, they are willing to pay for content. In India, however, people assume mobile games should be free. - Pradeep Gupta, Gamesberry Labs

The creator economy is experiencing an inflection point around the world and across market segments like India. - Vaibhav Domkundwar, Better Capital

The whole trend of doing something creative has taken off in a big way. If we had 50 million creators back in 2019, the number is set to grow to 500 million by 2025 with people relying on the internet to make money. - Vipul Agarwal, Unluclass

Historically, we have been a conservative market where profitability is a must for three to five years to go public. A lot of those norms have been relaxed by SEBI. - Devang Mehta, Anthill Ventures

The opportunity to take small businesses online is the next big ecommerce wave. - Nakul Kumar, Cashify

[Small businesses] can thrive only by going digital while continuing to build closer relationships with their customers and providing them with personalised service. - Pradeep Dodle, Wasabi

Due to the multiple use-cases and functionalities, the smartphone has become an integral part of daily life and a necessity. - Prachir Singh, Counterpoint

Technology provides ways for marketing teams to move away from a siloed way of operating to a more unified way of operating. - Neel Pandya, Pyxis One

As the internet becomes increasingly global and data-hungry, serving images and video in a high-performance, low-latency environment is fundamental for all websites to earn customer trust. - Divyesh Patel, Gumlet

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Quick commerce is emerging as one of the fastest-growing ecommerce models, serving the need for faster delivery among convenience-seeking customers. - Mukesh Kumar, RedSeer

Treating people and relationships as ‘media’ has massive ramifications. It has turned social media into digital malls. - Neeraj Arora, HalloApp

As we move towards web 2.0, the future of the interface is going to be augmented reality. - Shourya Agarwal, Flam

Deep personalisation is the future of customer engagement. - Anand Virani, CCT

Conversations represent the new digital storefront for businesses — virtually every business will need to build them. - Beerud Sheth, Gupshup

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).