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Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YS, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week (see the previous post here). Share these 30 gems and insights from the week of December 13-19 with your colleagues and networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights. See also our special compilation of quotes related to India’s coronavirus responses here.

India has demonstrated to the world that it is one of the cheapest producers of renewable energy. – Amitabh Kant, Niti Aayog

By 2025, India will have more than one lakh startups creating a value of $1 trillion, with 200 unicorns creating 3.5 million jobs. – TV Mohandas Pai, Aarin Capital

Entrepreneurship is the fuel for economic growth, prosperity and opportunity in India. – Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship

For us to be a leader in the world, we have to lead the technologies of the future to build them in India. – Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola

It is not only the cost of hiring manpower but it is also the accuracy or reliability of delivery of operations that matters. Space utilisation is what is pushing automation or helping automation grow in India. – Sangeet Kumar, Addverb

The more mobile data becomes within organisations, the more useful it shall be. – Tejeshwi Sharma, Sequoia India

Imagine in our country, over 70 crore women went to their bank branches, presented their business plans, and received loans within the limit of Rs 10 lakh. – Smriti Zubin Irani, Women and Child Development Minister

To include them in their targeted audience, fintech companies must establish personal relationships with the elderly rural population over time. – Praveen Paulose, Celusion Technologies

Tier-I and II cities, apart from the metros, are starting to have a higher disposable income, and therefore higher discretionary spending. – Sushant Goel, Third Wave Coffee

Property investors are prone to making decisions based on speculation, gut instincts, and emotions. This problem is compounded by the lack of trust, reliable data and transparency that plagues the Indian real estate business. – Kenish Shah, PropReturns

Family offices in India have evolved over time and they want to make a lot of investments into startups now. – Nimesh Kampani, trica

In India, the transport sector is currently the third largest emitter of CO2. So, EVs can be a game changer. Real estate players can tap into the opportunity for manufacturing, warehousing, charging stations and dealerships of EVs. – Ramesh Nair, Colliers

The trucks in India run in long haul for only about 13 to 15 days when they can actually optimally run anywhere between 20 to 25 days. And this is largely driven by opaque demand requirements and supply availability. – Venu Kondur, LOBB

Favourable policy push from Central Government, Delhi Government and several other State Governments has created the right environment for EV adoption. As a result, we believe, the last mile delivery space will be fully electrified by 2025. – Vikash Mishra, MoEVing

With a massive surge in e-commerce, in the next three to five years, the logistics industry needs to handle about 2X the load they process today. – Pramod Ghadge, Unbox Robotics

Scaling consistent quality is a huge challenge when it comes to astrology. – Jikku Abraham, Taaraka

In the last three months in India, collectively the crypto community has grown rapidly and all the exchanges have onboarded over 50 lakh Indians. – Neeraj Khandelwal, CoinDCX

If you are building a business for Indian customers, a .in domain is the best way to go forward due to the easy availability of finding names. – Abhiraj Malhotra, SchoolPad

Celebrities [..] are also becoming more and more open to engaging fans on social media and other platforms. – Nimish Goel, TrueFan

With changing lifestyles, people are choosing to eat light meals more frequently during the day as well. This has resulted in a huge demand for Indian snacks offered in smaller portions during the day. – Aakanksha Chaudhary, Hokart

Today, jewellery is as important as clothes, watches, and sandals. Most women won’t repeat jewellery, they need a change in terms of styles, colours, shades, etc. – Jigar Zaveri, Zaveri Pearls

When we want to create deeper depth in the product, integrating vernacular languages to make the transition to digital means as seamless as possible is a good option. – Rahul Raj, FloBiz

It is essential to understand that in order to build an economy where MSMEs have a larger role to play, the government will have to shed its universal outlook and adopt a more dissected sectoral approach. – Alok Gupta, Wadhwani Institute of Technology and Policy

We believe Indian SMEs will rapidly adopt technology in order to drive cost savings and efficiencies. This is a massive opportunity as 14 million manufacturing SMEs digitise their operations. – Shripati Acharya, Prime Venture Partners

There are about 15 million manufacturers and over 30 million retailers in India. About 5-10 percent of loss of business takes place annually because of age-old overburdening and unsecure local softwares that hampers their efficiency. – Vanchha Tiwari, Pretture

Not all components or raw materials required to manufacture drones are available in India. Having said that, the depth of engineering is continuously increasing. – Ankit Mehta, ideaForge

Traditionally, India is a follower when it comes to cutting-edge technology. – Tapan Kapoor, Aviconn

For the whole platform economy, there is probably so much demand that the only thing that concerns me is how can India produce engineers much faster. – Rao Sadhureddy, NNT

Protein deficiency is a very real, but invisible challenge facing India. – Parul Sharma, Gladful

Animal rights are taken for granted in India but the pain and suffering animals go through is no less than a human. – Zabi Khan, A Place to Bark Society

India is the right place to demonstrate social entrepreneurship because of the sheer number of problems that are waiting to be solved. – Manish Rathi, IntrCity

YS 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).