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Launched in 2014, StoryBites is a weekly feature from YourStory, featuring notable quotable quotes in our articles of this past week. This special series of compilations focuses on India’s COVID-19 struggle (see last week’s post here). Share these quotes and excerpts with your networks, and check back to the original articles for more insights.

Right now, the emphasis should be on escaping the health crisis by prioritising healthcare spending, on vaccinations, treatments, and healthcare infrastructure. – Gita Gopinath, IMF

With the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine and digital healthcare delivery have proven to be the norm. – Ajit Narayanan, MFine

Digital transformation is now focused on improving operational efficiency, providing an integrated approach toward patient care, automated administrative, and clinical processes, allowing enhanced innovation and delivering better patient outcomes. – Arunkumar Sampath, Indium Software

COVID-19 has been a catalyst to push through a much-needed behavioural change in patients and doctors, but it is yet to be seen how hospitals and healthcare institutions take advantage of the healthcare startup ecosystem. – Shyatto Raha, MyHealthcare

We are continuing to live through the worst humanitarian crisis ever. And we may not be able to stop it, but we can definitely alleviate the distress of many around us. – Ramesh Balasundara, Bal Utsav

When the pandemic first hit, nobody thought it would last for over a year. While running a business, along with running the house, can be done for a short time frame, an extended period of a year or more has adversely affected women entrepreneurs, CXOs, and executives. – Madhura Dasgupta, AspireForHer

In a pandemic, everything has been remote and over Zoom. This has made it even harder to raise money for everyone, but it’s impacted women entrepreneurs even more. – Namrata Ganatra, Sturish

We all have been talking about concepts like promotion of the gig economy and flexible working hours for a while now, but the pandemic made it a reality. Women as a segment would be a core benefit group of such changes. – Aditi Gupta, Stellaris Venture Partners

A lot of virtual assistance which can measure mental stress is available today. These tools can send a signal to employers about how their workforce is failing and what can be done to help them, which in turn will promote productivity. – Madhurima Agarwal, NetApp Excellerator

There are days where we face various mental challenges, but it also provides us with the freedom to work on our own time, balancing between personal and professional life,” Gayatri Mallika Bansal, THERE!

Digital literacy is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. – Sharda Gautam, Tata Trusts

Thanks to technology, within a very short span of time, many organisations were able to quickly move from in-person learning sessions to remote learning sessions. – J. Jagatheesh Jayanand, Bosch

Post pandemic, not only have people become more digitally equipped but also businesses. – Neeraj Tyagi, We Founder Circle

The pandemic helped us to realise what IT can do, in terms of technical implementation and organisational culture. – Zohaib Muhammed, Bosch

Last year, IT spending took the form of a ‘knee jerk reaction to enable a remote workforce in a matter of weeks. As hybrid work takes hold, CIOs will focus on spending that enables innovation, not just task completion. – John-David Lovelock, Gartner

People now expect to work remotely while work timings have become flexible. Organisations that never promoted work-from-home culture are surviving because of it. – Manish Vashist, IBM

Economic activity across India has been deeply affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, and it is now when our MSME’s and freelancer community require solutions to kickstart business activity. – Anupam Pahuja, PayPal

Consumer confidence, on the other hand, has dipped with the recent surge in COVID infections in some states imparting uncertainty to the [economic] outlook. – RBI

Over 10+ million local shops have played a significant role for decades, and this pandemic has nothing but reinforced their importance in our lives. – Harsh Pokharna, OkCredit

[The pandemic] has taught us to see the other side of life and has prepared us to be more resilient. – Vasudha M Sharma, Vyasa Health Care

The pandemic has been a very difficult situation, but it has also been a time for out-of-the-box innovation. – Sandhya Gupta, Aavishkaar

Learn empathy. We all are in the same storm but different boats, so it is important to have empathy for varied circumstances that people are dealing with. – Geeta Gurnani, Microsoft

The new order of work requires talent that is networked and fluid with an ever-growing set of skills that is fast-changing. – Nishchae Suri, EdCast

Co-creation as an idea has been maturing fast, as seen during the handling of the pandemic. After initial hiccups, a lot of SOPs, solutions, drug development, and vaccination programmes got accelerated thanks to co-creation. – Ved Prakash, Trianz

It has been a learning curve rather as the world has changed. – Ajay Shetty, Salud

Organisations have had to fall back on strengthening their knowledge management practices to continue business operations, exhibit resilience, and develop or adapt to new business models and ecosystems. – Shanthi Natarajan, TCS

No artiste, no theatre person, no musician, no dancer has gone on stage to actually perform due to the pandemic. – Vinita Bali, Akshaya Patra Foundation

Ecommerce has emerged as a safe and convenient means of purchase. – Adarsh Menon, Flipkart

People got used to buying fruits and vegetables online in the pandemic. But, the problem with online grocery is you’re stuck with what they sell you. – Mayank Chaurasia, VegEase

Catering to the post-pandemic lifestyle, savvy foodpreneurs are focused on digitisation to offer tech-friendly services to catch their target audience’s attention. – Vaibbhav Arora, BhojanTech

The pandemic is set to become a game-changer for us as the hospitality industry moves from using reusable crockery to eco-friendly, disposable tableware. – Amardeep Bardhan, Prakritii Cultivating Green

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).