In the present paper we show that Hall algebras of finitary exact categories behave like quantum groups in the sense that they are generated by indecomposable objects. Moreover, for a large class of such categories, Hall algebras are generated by their primitive elements, with respect to the natural comultiplication, even for non-hereditary categories. Finally, we introduce certain primitively generated subalgebras of Hall algebras and conjecture an analogue of Lie correspondence for those finitary categories.