Blog

Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a regular feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our past articles. Share these gems and insights with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

Drawn from our comprehensive coverage of entrepreneurship, innovation and technology, we present 50 quotes of the year on the continuing rise of digital media and tech transformation. See also our annual quotes compilation from 2021 and 2020.

We have divided these 50 quotes into eight categories: Data and decisions, Ecommerce, Democratisation, Creator economy, Enterprise impacts, Sectoral transformation, Tech trends, and The road ahead.

Check out YourStory’s Book Review section with over 350 titles on entrepreneurship, innovation, startups, leadership, and tech trends. See also our list of Top 10 Books of the Year for Entrepreneurs for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012.

YourStory wishes all founders, innovators, changemakers and storytellers a Happy Holiday Season, and all the best for success and impact in 2023!

Data and decisions

Data science should be pervasive, embedded in your business processes. – Mohit Kumar, Udaan

Data is nothing without strategy. – Bernard Marr, ‘Data Strategy’

Data is soil, it’s fertile, it’s an ecosystem where you can make interesting applications. – Vimal Venkatram, Snowflake

It is all about refining raw data into actionable insights. – Rashmit Singh Sukhmani, SatSure

Data will play a crucial role in driving hyper-personalised experience. – Gaurav Mangla, Pickrr

Data helps in presenting points more articulately, argue more coherently, and reach a higher elevation in our conversations—whether among friends or the larger public. – Govindraj Ethiraj, IndiaSpend.org

Data is at the heart of all decision making. – Kirat Chhina, Urban Company

Metadata is the glue that can bind the modern data stack together, the layer that will allow increasingly diverse, siloed tools and people to collaborate effectively. – Prukalpa Sankar, Atlan

Ecommerce

Ecommerce needs to be democratised. The right way to build technology should be to make lives for everyone better, and not for just a few people. – Saahil Goel, Shiprocket

The global retail industry is currently experiencing a generational shift. The future always lay in e-commerce, and the pandemic only accelerated this shift. – Arpit Gupta, RetainIQ

The advent of technology and digital accessibility means we are no longer in an era of one size fits all. With the amount of data made available to brands, consumers expect hyper-personalised experiences. – Avlesh Singh, WebEngage

Live commerce is inevitable. It is not new; it is similar to teleshopping networks. – Kaushik Mukherjee, SUGAR Cosmetics

The future of commerce is undoubtedly conversational. – Aakrit Vaish, Haptik

Consumers love watching video content before making transactions. That’s why content-led commerce is the future of ecommerce. – Saurabh Singh, Flickstree

When one is starting a new brand, digital is the best bet. You can create demand and presence for your product. But after a point, offline is the way forward. – Abhishek Shah, Almo

Democratisation

The biggest challenge when it comes to any new technology is inclusion. How do you really make it accessible to anyone and then be owned by everyone? – Suruchi Gupta, GIANT Protocol

Connected women, empowered with access to technology processes, are key to a country’s economic growth. – Sumana Iyengar, Goavega Software

Technology is the key to making a level playing field for the rural and the urban by opening opportunities across villages. – Vamsi Udayagiri, Hesa

If you have a smartphone, you can have a passport. – Golok Kumar Simli, MEA, Government of India

Innovation is always going to be ahead of governance. Everybody knows that. It’s basically a matter of one catching up. – Vivek Gupta, CoinDCX

Creator economy

A growing OTT marketplace is a boon for consumers looking for content and an opportunity for advertisers to reach the right set of audiences. – Akshay Modi, Modi Naturals

Creator’s space is the only one where you can start at any age. – Mansi (Magsplay)

Your comments section is your university. and it will tell you what you can do better. – Manish Pandey, brand consultant

Every company today is a content company. Every business is heavily investing in content marketing. – Anirudh Singla, Pepper

Live streaming and content moderation are inseparable. – Varun Saxena, Bolo Live

Enterprise impacts

While hybrid working can represent the best of both working worlds, this shift could require an investment in more sophisticated technology. – Rahul Goyal, ADP

Knowledge management is changing into ‘Digital Intelligence’. The role of knowledge managers is transforming into adding intelligence to the workforce with the help of digital technologies. – Hariprasad Reddy, Wipro

Software is a global business, and no matter where you start, you need to compete against the best for creating institutions that last. – Arpit Maheshwari, Stellaris Venture Partners

Applications are the epicentre of any business. – Venkatesh Sundar, Indusface

Tech can’t do much in the absence of a digital footprint. – Gaurav Lahoti, Khatabook

Threats and vulnerabilities have become a way of life, especially in the cloud scenario. Thus, we need to understand the risk and then comprehend ways of mitigating it. – Suvin Mullaseril, Palo Alto Networks

Sectoral transformation

The fact that digital payment models have turned profitable is testimony to their strength. There is a possibility of touching many more lives. – Anubrata Biswas, Airtel Payments Bank

Fintech and the emergence of the startup culture go hand in hand. – Robin Bhowmik, Manipal Global Education Services

This is the age of a global financial revolution! Social trading is the future. – Dipankar Biswas, FlipItNews

This digital-first era is all about scalability and the biggest banks of 2030 will be digital-first. – Brett King, Moven

Digital technology gives a far more granular view of risk management than the traditional models. – Bipin Preet Singh, MobiKwik

Adoption of new technology is necessary for a transparent accounting system. – Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Finance Minister

Robotics is also being used in labs and hospitals for repetitive tasks, rehabilitation, and physical therapy and to support patients with long-term conditions. – Vineet Aggarwal

Tech trends

There is currently a great need for scalable, reliable 5G solutions across nearly every enterprise and industry. – Kalyan Kumar, HCLTech

With affordable smartphones and easy access to data, the demand for good learning content is witnessing unprecedented growth. – Kinner N Sachdeva, Knorish

Synthetic media is poised to become omnipresent in the near future and voice is at the core of it. – Ankur Edkie, Murf AI

Technology powers great experiences. – Janelle Estes, UserTesting

Digital necessitates you to be more human than ever. – Samriddh Dasgupta, Heads Up For Tails

Platform business models are stabilising and proliferating, building on omnipresent connectivity and information access, creating massively networked ecosystems of customers, suppliers, and market enablers. – Anand Sri Ganesh, NSRCEL

We see an evolution and revolution happening, where software today is an integral part of any solution. There is a lot of software which is getting embedded in all kinds of products, including hardware, and this dominance is primarily driven by deep tech. – Ramkumar Narayanan, NASSCOM Product Council

The road ahead

The world needs a 20 million developer talent pool by 2030. – Ashish Sharma, upGrad

Do not have an affinity to just one technology, come out of your comfort zone to look at new technologies and experiment with different solutions. – Ashish Anantharaman, ZestMoney

If you ride technology, you can ride the future. – Corinne Vigreux, TomTom

There is so much inefficiency that technology can solve. Going after these models means the founder can hit the road running with the product they have built out rather than create a new category that didn’t exist. – Ganapathy Venugopal, Axilor Ventures

Technology is a terrible master but a wonderful servant. We can either condemn it or accept it and use its tools to make our lives more efficient. – Sachin Shukla, UPDEED

With tech capabilities, there also comes the responsibility. – Jyoti Joshi, Kroop AI

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).