‘Taking support is not a sign of failure’ – 65 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 65 gems and insights from the week of May 6-12 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our compilation of Top 50 Quotes from 2018 here.

Storytelling adds value to the user experience and involves both visual storytelling, verbal, and written narratives. - Ishita Jain, Autodesk Foundation

Getting early customer insights is non-negotiable. - Nirupa Rao, Villgro

Ask any growing brand, and they will agree that a great word-of-mouth recommendation is invaluable, which cannot be possibly matched by any amount of marketing and advertising. - Pallavi Utagi, Superbottoms

The consumer can ask a founder and the business to delete all the data. If not, there can be legal recourse taken. - Sharda Balaji, Novojuris Legal

The underlying story for success is the clear identification of the pain point or need, and the convergence of all stakeholders in curating the solution. - V Ramanathan, mentor

Public relations is one of the most potent tools that can help businesses organically garner market credibility and increase consumer mindshare. - Aakriti Bhargava, Wizikey

To be successful, every idea needed the right product, and the right marketing and after-sales service. - Atish Laddad, Docterz

Users are now looking for a more interactive, social, and instant form of engagement on their mobile phones. - Abhinay Jain, Bakbuck

A gender diverse board better represents the company and helps bring in a diverse range of opinions. - Antony Alex, Rainmaker

Technology acts as the bridge to get out of the “motherhood bubble." - Shravani Prakash, elleNomics

Being meek and soft-spoken is no indicator of lack of talent and skill. - Apurva Purohit, Jagran Group

Motherhood has a very humanising effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. - Meryl Streep

Together we win: chin up princess or else the crown falls. - Mother of Himani Mishra, Brand Radiator

The road to motherhood need not be paved with penalties. - Sonica Aron, Marching

Sheep

Taking support is not a sign of failure. - Tejas Parulekar, SaffronStays

Leveraging the fast-evolving trade, infrastructure, technology, and human resources can make warehousing the backbone of logistics and modern trade in India. - Aditya Vazirani, Robinson Global Logistics Solutions

In personal mobility, there is a shift from ownership. That will not move towards the taxi industry but more towards self-drive or rental. - Greg Moran, ZoomCar

eSports is becoming a mass market phenomenon in India. - Mukta Apahale, Crevise Technologies

Guided counselling services is scarce in India and only two to three percent students have access to this data currently. - Amit Jain, Founder GirnarSoft

India does not have a mainstream education product solving the employability problem. - Ashish Munjal, Sunstone Eduversity

The wave of internet penetration and smartphone access has opened up opportunities for tutor-led, tech-enabled learning and the market is ready to be disrupted by data-driven remediation. - Mukul Rustagi, Classplus

India imports 80 percent of its oil needs and aims to bring it down to 67 percent by 2022 by replacing it with local exploration, renewable energy, and alternative forms of fuel. - Shiva Vig, BioD Energy

While there are many brands catering to adults, there are very limited choices for baby and child mattresses. - Shruti Malani, Beddy

India is changing and it’s changing so rapidly. The internet, although in its infancy here, is taking away barriers between us all and making us equal. - Puneet Kumar, Nexus Venture Partners

Neighbourhood grocery stores are at the centre of India’s retail story and represent a vast market. - Rakesh Singh, HDFC Bank

India is at this very interesting crossroads where fashion consumption with ecommerce has skyrocketed and the consumption appetite has increased voraciously. - Nancy Bhasin, This For That

Fortune favours the bold. But, India favours the patient. - Bert Mueller, California Burrito

UPI has now made its way to steal the market share from net banking from being just a wallet killer. - Harshil Mathur, Razorpay

A dysfunctional credit market means SMEs are borrowing informally at 30 percent interest. This represents an unparalleled opportunity for financial institutions to lend to them far more competitively. - Nadia Sood, CreditEnable

Only few products make it to the masses and many good products are restricted to the elite with more money and access to better advice. - Mukesh Kalra, Moneysights

Cloud is not a destination; it’s an operating model. - Jeff Clarke, Dell

Organisations across the globe are increasingly adopting IoT and Machine Learning solutions to improve their supply chains and operations. - Adarsh Kumar, CEO of TagBox

IoT is not about one huge monolith; it’s about getting the whole ecosystem going. It is not possible for any one company to deliver everything end-to-end. - VS Sridhar, Tata Communications

Though still a work-in-progress, AI is helping weed out fake from real news and customise newsfeeds. - Umang Bedi, Dailyhunt

The only way to survive in a world of Machine Learning is good old “human learning”. - Vinodh Kumar, Belong.co

AI is at a nascent stage when it comes to the value it can have for the social impact sector. - Jacquelline Fuller, Google.org

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the unique characteristic of blurring the lines between humans and machines, with technology working side by side, and in many cases becoming embedded within societies and the human body. - Sumeet Swarup, NASSCOM

Scaling up education only happens digitally. - Raghav Gupta, Coursera

Data generation has been modernised, but data analysis is lagging. - Abhishek Jha, Polly

As computing becomes embedded in every aspect of our lives, the choices developers make will define the world we live in. - Satya Nadella, Microsoft

Blockchain offers considerable opportunities to automate and incentivise a trust-based supply chain financing and could go a long way in radicalising the way supply chains function. - Prashant Shah, Vegavid Technology

Retailers want technology to tell them what they need to stock up on, and not what they don’t have to stock up on. - Amit Sharma, ShopX

We’ve reached the era of services and content, and moved far away from utility-based apps leading the market. - Paul Barnes, App Annie

IPR cements the integrity of brands and is at the heart of a modern economy. - Dinesh Jotwani, Supreme Court Advocate

To the families using the internet through a shared device, privacy might mean privacy from one another. - Sundar Pichai, Google

Tools are no use if you don't use them. - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

In the Gulf, fintech startups are expected to attract $2 billion in private funding over the next 10 years. - Khalid Al Rumaihi, Bahrain Economic Development Board

Startups that graduate from accelerator programmes increase their chances of funding by 3x. - Ajeya Motaganahalli, Senior Director and Leader, NetApp

Investors don’t drive the market. They invest based on where the market is and how the market acts. - Manish Singhal, Pi Ventures

It is time for a better kind of capitalism. - Andrew Kuper, LeapFrog Investments

There has been an increasing demand for industrial water but there has always been a lack of finding innovative methods of recharging the used water. - Ankit Magan,

Retas

The blind deserve the same quality of life as that of a sighted person and have the right to participate equally in the society. - RN Mohanty, Sightsavers India

We do not need sympathy, but empathy. The narrative of disability needs to be changed, the language needs to be changed. - Divyanshu Ganatra, India's first blind solo paraglider

Performance of healthcare organisations across functional areas is a concern and is limiting their growth and service delivery. - Vikram Anand, CapBuild

Consumers want to know how many artificial ingredients products contain, and what is the contribution of various ingredients towards their daily nutritional requirements. - Dipti Motiani, Second Nature

In order to create a corpus of wealth that will actually give you inflation-beating returns, taking some risk is inevitable. - Hena Mehta, Basis

Misery is just a state of mind. - Beas Dev Ralhan, Next Education India

Excitement is the bottom line, first and foremost. - Vinay Pathak

Making a connection between patterns and finishing a work of art is itself an act of success. - Satish Pujari, Technicolor

Fashion is not what you wear, fashion is how you wear what you wear. - Neeraj Gaba, Next Top Model

We have many folk art traditions going back to over a thousand years, and constitute our precious heritage. We have to show that we value our culture and our roots. - Vinay Prashant, Tamaala Gallery

When nature touches us, we enter the world of peace even though we found ourselves surrounded by challenges and worries. - Sampa Das

Everyone wants to do something rewarding. But when it comes to execution; 80 percent quit and out of the 20 percent who try, around 18 percent fail. - Rama Pandey, Infinite Mobility

If you’ve been blessed, be a blessing. - Bill Campbell, coach

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).

Also read: The Top 10 Books of 2018 for Entrepreneurs