‘Financial planning is not a luxury anymore but a necessity’ – 15 quotes from India’s pandemic journey

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). This special series of compilations focuses on India’s COVID-19 struggle. Share these quotes and excerpts with your networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

See also our pick of Top Quotes of 2021 on Entrepreneurship, Investment, Digital Transformation, Storytelling, The India Opportunity, Pandemic Resilience, Failure Recovery, Design, and Art.

Although global cases and hospitalisation have declined in recent months, the scare caused by the second wave of COVID-19 in 2021 seems valid. - Ashok Patel, Max Ventilator

COVID changed everything. Nobody knew anything about the disease; nothing was available in medical journals. - Saurav Kasera, Clirnet

From ICU, transport and emergency, and anaesthesia, to home care ventilators, there is a global increase in the demand for ventilators to support COVID-19 patients who cannot breathe on their own. - Ashok Patel, Max Ventilator

Working through the pandemic with two children at different stages of schooling was indeed a challenge. But I would not complain about ‘working from home’ – it at least meant that I had a safe home and a job to do, while many had lost either or both. - Sukanya Padmanabhan, Swiss Re

What we found challenging was the human element that we had taken for granted and which was suddenly missing. - Rahul Matthan, Trilegal

[The pandemic] reduced interactions with friends and coworkers, and I think that has had a deleterious effect on how creative teams collaborate in general. - Krish Ashok, 'The Masala Lab'

When COVID-19 news started to reach us in early 2020, I tried again and this time found a much more favourable environment to taking this [diagnostic testing] idea forward. - Manoj Gopalkrishnan, Algorithmic Biologics

It became hard to stay positive. It was hard to stay focused on work when people around you were struggling. - Nav Pawera, Jiva

There was already a tailwind when we started. There was a need for a [social media] platform like ours as many groups, including small political parties, municipal offices, and other communities, could not communicate with each other. - Abhishek Kejriwal, Kutumb

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During the pandemic, Myla [My Life Assistant] helped many service providers and vendors who were suffering due to lack of work. - Siddharth Kulbhaskar, Myla

What was heartening for me was to see a lot of students get time from their academics to build their own startups during the pandemic. - Suresh Narasimha, Cocreate Ventures

When Covid-19 hit and everything started to shut down, I started to think about ways to remain fit. - Manjeet Singh, FlexifyMe

The pandemic stimulated the level of interest in video games among the general public and made it a mainstream source of entertainment for them. - Lokesh Suji, Esports Federation of India

It is not common for companies from Goa to be known in the tech space in India. But the approach has changed since the onset of COVID-19 with remote working now becoming more acceptable, and Goa is being seen with a little bit more seriousness. - Luke Sequeira, Numadic

Financial planning is not a luxury anymore but a necessity, that's one of the biggest learning from the Covid pandemic. - Vinay Bansal, Inflection Point Ventures

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).