‘We have never had easier access to credit than now’ – 25 quotes of the week on India business opportunities

Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous edition here). Share these 25 gems and insights from the week of August 8-14 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See our special compilation of quotes related to India’s coronavirus responses here.

India, in its 75th year of independence, is home to as many as 75,000 startups. - Jitendra Singh, Union Minister

Indian drone startups have started delivering specialised products that meet the Indian Army’s frontline requirements. - Smit Shah, Drone Federation of India

Higher edtech will be on the rise for the next 4 to 5 decades. - Ronnie Screwvala, upGrad

It is time that startups and brands create a market for themselves globally, which only a handful of snack companies from India have been able to do. - Nidhi Singh, Samosa Singh

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Typically in India, D2C brands take the ‘own-website-first’ approach rather than ‘own-website only’, unlike in North America. - Bharati Balakrishnan, Shopify India

There is no dearth of beauty and personal care brands globally and it is a sectoral challenge. (But) an Ayurveda-driven brand has greater appeal and it is non-replicable globally. - Shankar Prasad, Plum Goodness

Half the products in the market are labelled organic and are anything but that. You can’t have a long-term play with dishonesty. - Seeza Bhardwaj, The Green Loom

Today customers would want to have the product within two to three days of placing the order. - Rupan Oberoi, Amara Herbs

There are many intricacies in women’s footwear—different sets of rules when it comes to production, and the market is very different too. - Meenakshi Kalsi, Metro Shoes

Opening a tea stall is nothing new. Many people do that, but a girl, especially an economics graduate, selling tea on the road is something not familiar, and maybe that made me famous. - Priyanka Gupta, ‘Graduate Chaiwali’

The recruitment business continues to grow strongly and we remain optimistic for the current quarter as well. - Hitesh Oberoi, Info Edge (India)

Tier II and Tier III cities don’t have community spaces that enable these interactions [of meeting new people, pitching your ideas, sharing creative thoughts, listening to stories of success and failure, reading books that truly make the difference]. - Richa Sharma, The Book Cafe

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There are many companies who are making solar dryers but they are not educating farmers of the use die to which many farmers before bought the dryer. - Varun Raheja, Raheja Solar Food Processing

We believe this (the universal electronic health record framework) will be a reality in the next five years. - Amber Nigam, basys.ai

While facility-based care sees a lot of investment, and perhaps to some degree in the diagnostic space, the out-of-hospital healthcare does not receive much investment. - Meena Ganesh, Portea Medical

In a country like India, which has 10 out of 15 most polluted cities in the world, it becomes even more important that people change their attitude towards nature, at micro and macro levels. - Upasana Koli, WOTR

With the support of dedicated cycle lanes and infrastructure, we can expect [the e-bicycle segment] to grow even faster. - Viveak M Palanivasan, Voltrix

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A path of innovation, acceleration, and growth using streamlined, cross-platform fintech software can assist any Indian organisation looking to increase operational efficiency in supply chain-based distribution. - Arun Singhal, Source.One

The latest RBI guidelines address market conduct practices, and are very reassuring for the industry. - Sugandh Saxena, Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE)

RBI regulation definitely brings in more trust towards the digital payment ecosystem. - Rohit Prasad, Easebuzz

After remaining resilient for almost six months amid global headwinds of tightening liquidity and rising inflation, Indian PE/VC investment flows for the first time have shown some tepidness. - Vivek Soni, EY

While more than 80% of people in India do not have insurance support, they depend on their immediate earnings to cater for daily expenses, leaving no savings to bear the medical costs. - Archit Garg, Glamyo Health

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In India, the biggest success story [of domestic capital] has been the SIDBI funds of fund for startups, which has created 40 fund managers at seed level, but also need more growth funds as just venture fund is not enough. - Gopal Srinivasan, TVS Capital Funds

NBFCs’ meteoric rise can be attributed to several factors such as changing customer demands, increased digitisation, and the factor that we’re going to focus on in this piece--technology. - Rajat Deshpande, FinBox

Historically, we have been a nation of savers. But we have never had easier access to credit than now. - Sumit Gwalani, epiFi

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).