All Quotes

"I started something because I wanted to be independent. A woman never gets empowered unless she earns"

"A positive mind can tackle the worst of the challenges"

"I had the chance to live away from my in-laws, but I have always held the belief that family is meant to stay together, and I took up the challenge to change the family equation. It took me three years to win over my in-laws, but once they opened up, I received a lot of encouragement and love from them"

"When I started, there were hardly any women entrepreneurs. It was a male-dominated environment. I had to face a lot of criticism, a lot of people tried to ensure that I did not succeed and grow. The only thing I believed in was that my concept was unique, unusual and it was being introduced in India for the first time"

"My husband was very supportive and offered to fund my dream but I was adamant that I would not take money from anyone. I booked the place and took a small loan and got started"

"My approach was scientific and I started working with doctors from day one. This worked in our favour too"

"From day one I was clear that the brand would not be a glamorous one. The centre was a clinic and was projected in that very manner"

"It took me a good five to six years to convince the medical fraternity to understand that wellness was a larger domain and it required the collaboration of beauty, health and fitness experts; in other words a cosmetologist, a nutritionist and a doctor. Eventually I did manage to convince them"

"People are more educated, women have started to work and they all want to look good, feel good and feel positive"

"I wanted VLCC to be a one-stop shop for everything, from top to toe, so it saves a person time and energy. Every service is provided as per their requirement and their needs. We also started services and then launched products. We wanted the clients to try our products and that really worked for us"

"This helped the brand evolve and have global presence as well"

"We have our own R&D centers, I myself travel extensively to all parts of the world to fairs, conferences etc., to keep up with the latest in the health and beauty sector"

"From the start, I was clear in my mind that whatever venture I get into should benefit the society and be accessible to all segments. VLCC is a manifestation of that dream"

"I’m still somewhat in shock"

"You have to build up from the bottom."

"I don’t think there’s another physicist in the town of Selborne, so that things slowly leak out over the news. But there’s no marching in the street here."

"That’s right. I, my motivation was really coming from seeing that something does work, the brain, and understanding more about how the brain works would be necessary to understand thought consciousness or what have you."

"And that it somehow was related to collective phenomena in networks. And I slowly wove my way from an interest in how the brain functioned to a question of how could hardware or software, or whatever you want to call it, wetware, produce such a thing."

"And the centre of gravity of my knowledge and understanding moved slowly from much more physics oriented to the neurobiological one. And somewhere along the line, this connection between AI, networks, neural networks and physics developed."

"In 1988, I started Gijima Electronic And Security Systems (Pty) Ltd, which is the flagship company of Guma Group."

"In a good physics problem, you have a system which is well defined and where you can understand something about how collectively it may work in a way which is more robust than the individual little bits and pieces. You don’t leap into a problem overall saying, I want to understand how mind works."

"You have to build up from the bottom. If you were doing weather, you would say, well, I want to understand what storms are without going back to interacting air nitrogen molecules."

"There is no short game for a venture capitalist"

"Building products has become easier and cheaper, but building brands is harder than ever"

"The first phase of ROI is understanding if your unit metrics justify growth. Without that, there is no longer game"

"If you're building a platform like Zepto or Blinkit, you’re in the Formula One lane. You need capital at scale, network effects, and speed. You will get diluted You’ll own less than 10% of your company and that’s okay, if that’s the game you signed up for"

"Somehow, we have come to equate profitability with a lack of ambition"

"Technology has flattened the field - logistics, payments, backend operations - all are easier now. But if you don’t use tech to understand your consumer better,you will burn cash blindly"

"You can test your idea with very little capital. Bootstrap first. Validate your model. Don’t dilute before you’re ready"

"It's not expert-driven influence anymore. It’s user-generated, community-led. You need to meet them where they are with authenticity."

"Gen Z isn’t disloyal. They’re identity-driven. Whether it’s sustainability, ingredient sourcing or personalization they buy what aligns with their values"

"Somehow, we have come to equate profitability with a lack of ambition. That’s wrong"

"Enduring brands will be profitable. It’s not optional. But you need clarity on when and how you will get there and investors aligned with that journey"

"Looking at the last three decades in the field, I would be most satisfied if there were 100 or 1,000 of us in this tribe."

"Women’s relationship with money will have to be fixed. Someone could be a high performer but opportunities pass by because of money - be it their own compensation or fixing a budget"

"My family environment was supportive; in hindsight, that was very important. You need to encourage women in your life to try things out, she said, adding that one must do the hard work alone but a support system makes all the difference. Instead of asking women ‘why?’ loved ones need to ask them ‘why not"

"Progress has to happen. There's more of us; we have a voice. We need to do better. Stand up for yourself"

"We’ve all been stereotyped. But we face it with humour and a thick skin. You cannot let it affect your focus"

"Well, that they have today on the space station tastes great but what they are essentially is individually pre-prepared meals. You'll get sort of a TV dinner chunk to heat up, maybe add some water to and eat. The problem with that is that once you have you pre-prepared, say, individual serving of lasagna, it will stay lasagna for the rest of time. It will never be anything else."

"That's right. It's a specialized pantry. It has to be shelf-stable. That means it needs to be able to last the length of the mission without go bad. But yeah, essentially that's what we're doing."

"NASA is systematically checking off all the prerequisites for a long duration mission, and a series of HI-SEAS missions were launched in 2012 to investigate crew composition and cohesion,"

"The longer each mission becomes, the better we can understand the risks of space travel,We hope that this mission will provide NASA with solid data on how best to select and support a flight crew that will work cohesively as a team while in space."

"For example, in the real world when you send an email and get a response in a week, that’s generally fine,” . “But when you’re in an analog and someone doesn’t get back to you within 24 hours, it’s torture. You feel abandoned.”"

"The first time you step outside without a helmet, it’s like going from sixties black and white TV to high-definition"

"“If you really need to go out clubbing on the weekends, you’re going to be pretty miserable in an analog of a long duration."

"When I think about the skills that served me best, being able to do improv was a huge part of that “It teaches you to think on your feet and also teaches you a whole lot about teamwork."

"Most golfers were business people, professionals such as medical doctors and the like, and were always surrounded by the successful people. I learned a lot."

"One of the most beautiful parts of South Africa."

"Don’t forget, these were tough times; it was apartheid at its worst."

"Two things. I have two degrees in chemistry, which many people don’t know. The first was at Michigan. It was a BS in chemistry. But, also, I got a dual major in applied mathematics, which shows my age, because they didn’t have computer science there, at the time. So I had a good advisor who told me that, “You’re taking all these mathematics courses, so maybe you should take a few more.” And I did. I spent an extra summer term there, and they gave me the dual major, which gave me the insights into the computer science career that I have. But I also ended up eventually working in the chemistry industry for a significant number of years, first at a dyestuff company, and then as a pharmaceutical R&D chemist, both in R&D, with my bachelor’s, and then I got my master’s while I was working full time. So I like to call myself a “serendipitous roboticist.” I kind of stumbled into it for – in an odd way; not like most folks, who have had this passion for robotics from their youths. I’ve had a passion for science from my youth, but not for – specifically for robotics."