These business ideas are grouped based on the following target audience.

1) Working bachelors
2) Working couples
3) Corporates & Startups



1) Business: Laundry for apartment societies


Target Audience: Working Bachelors, Working Couples

Picking the right apartment society is the key for this.

You’ll have to pick a society where most are working couples (with/without kids) and bachelors. Working people don’t have the time to do laundry, and would rather avoid it for a small cost per month.

At my society, the guy who does this gets 50 rupees per kg of clothes for washing and folding.

Few washing machines and you can be up and running. (75k-1L/month net)


2) Business: Dog walking services


Target Audience: Working Couples

Lots of people with pets, not enough time to walk their dogs.

To walk the dog 1 hour per day you can charge Rs.150-200 per hour. You can have interested students work part time, give them 100 per hour, take remaining as commission.

Collect payment on a subscription model.

Always have backups.

Keep sending the same person to walk the dog.

Caveats:

Training and backup is necessary in this.

Initial few days of any subscription, someone well experienced has to assist.

And then, the trainee can pick it up.

Again, picking the right area is key.

Choose posh areas/societies that have IT employees, managers, etc.


3/ Business: Tiffin Service


Target Audience: Bachelors, but sometimes even working couples.

Home cooked. Or at least as good.

A lady near our office charges 70 rupees per tiffin.

Her cost is ~40 rupees.

There are over 50 people in our office who get it.

She delivers to few offices.

Most bachelors eat out and don’t cook.

Most of them will like food that

- they get from same source every day - has variety in the menu - is easy on their stomach.

You give them all that and you have got regular paying customers.

Caveats:

Need to manage wastage and have to be quantitative about how it’s done.

You can have different tier of pricing.

Create offers for different segments of customers depending on the cost of ingredients. Target IT companies, IT parks, etc.

Put out fliers.

Ask permission from each company/floor in a building to stick your flier on their notice board.


4/ Business: Daycare service (for children, pets)


Target Audience: Working Couples

Working Couples with children/pets are hard pressed for time.

Some days all they want is to take some time off and take off somewhere without their children/pet. And they will all pay a premium to make sure their pet and children are well taken care of when they are not there.

You need well trained staff, pay them well on a retainer.

Keep your commission on top of the payment from each pa(w)rent.


5/ Business: Agency of cooks


Target Audience: Bachelors, Working Couples

Some bachelors in my office have found a cook who comes to their home and cooks, charges roughly ~2k per person.

But it’s quite difficult finding these cooks.

Also if they stop coming someday, the person suffers.

Families with working couples also do the same thing.

Bachelors usually can make do with tiffin service.

Families with working couples can’t.

They will gladly pay for having someone come to their home and cook for them.

Have a local agency of cooks willing to go to different homes and cook for people.

Charge them a per-head cost including the cook’s salary and your commission.

Send cooks for demo cooking.

If families like them, you can put them on a retainer for that particular cook.

Always have substitute cooks.

Send them to sub in place of the main cook if the main cook has to take a leave due to sickness or travel.

Also, you can partner up with wholesale vegetable vendors and grocers.

Offer a reasonable, cheap subscription for those too.


6/ Business: Surveillance Systems


Target Audience: Startups

New startups are cropping up everywhere.

Such startups get office space or factory space.

They all need protection.

For that, surveillance has become an important part of the process.

Setting up surveillance systems for such startups is a lucrative business.

You can get 50% upfront payment.

Put the remaining 50% as your investment.

Pay and set it up for the company.

Get paid the remaining on the day of setup.

The investment is not perishable if things go south.

You will need a window for refunds, and a no-refund policy after that window.

Also, you can offer a small cost AMC for the system you set up for them.


7/ Business: Social Media Marketing agency


Target Audience: Startups, Corporates, anyone with something to sell.

Look at Money Twitter.

So many guys there who built their accounts from nothing.

Most brands in India pay some random agency for marketing.

Most agencies have no know-how of making a brand go viral.

These agencies rarely ever get them the right leads.

From demographic targeting to getting the leads to convert, most agencies have no clue how to do it.

Influencer marketing agencies have a rough process. They

- find the segment of the company
- contact people with higher following in that segment
- have these influencers post pre-formatted content

The content screams “promoted”.

People also avoid such sales-y looking posts.

Here’s how you can do it differently.

Check out what @GrammarHippy writes on his tweets and threads.

Offer performance based % of business deals.

But you’ll need to be damn good at what you’re offering.

It has to be a win-win deal.
- Copywriting
- Ads
- Funnel creation
- Branding
- Email marketing

Whatever it is that you do - pick one niche and build a reputation around it.

You’ll have better reputation, you’ll be known for results and execution.

Sky is the limit in this line of business.


8/ Business: Gift boxing solutions


Target Audience: Corporates and well funded startups

Many corporates gift their employees for occasions.

This is happening across the year.

Be it birthdays, festivals, or important company wide events, there’s some gifting process.

You can offer customised gift boxing solutions to such corporates.

Tie up with brands across segments.
- Food related gifts (the most common)
- Apparels
- Gadgets
- Clothing
- Customised Accessories

Offer the portfolio of brands/products/gifts you have, and let the clients choose the mix in the package.

Based on the mix and the number, charge them.

9/ Business: Website design, development & maintenance


Target Audience: Small to Medium local indie businesses

Some no-brainer things that get your business good leads:

- Having a good website
- Ranking for few industry specific keywords in Google

Small and medium businesses, startups - they need this.

This is a slightly crowded space now.

But most of the agencies are pathetic at their work.

If you can do a half decent job at this, hustle after small businesses without proper internet presence, you’ll make bank.

I was doing this for a while, and stopped it to focus on trading.

Most businesses only need
- a landing page
- a products/services section
- a contact-us page

Some might need an online shopping page.

There are solutions with Wordpress, Webflow, and such frameworks.

If you learn the framework inside out, you can create such websites within a couple of weeks.

Companies pay anywhere from
- 20-50k for a simple website
- 60k-1L for a full featured e-commerce site

Well funded businesses even pay >3-4L for a job well done.

Once you have a method of getting clients, you can scale the operations by adding employees.

The competition for this in India is piss-poor.

People in other countries (US, etc.,) charge upwards of $10k for such websites.

If you can do a great job at it for 1/5th of that cost, even US based startups and small businesses will outsource it to you.


10/ Business: Housekeeping and cleaning services


Target: Working Couples, Bachelors, Startups, Corporates

Once you get to a certain income level, you direly want to outsource mundane activities.

The topmost thing that most people hate doing is cleaning and home maintenance.

Idea: Offer housekeeping and cleaning services on a retainer.

Charge based on number of rooms, toilets, bathrooms.

Offer different frequency of cleaning (every alternate day, weekly once, etc.)

Based on that, put them on a subscription.

Offer discounts for 6m/1y subscription.

Have a thorough training program for staff, with tip-top look.

Tie up with cleaning solutions related companies for wholesale supplies.

You can also branch out and offer corporate housekeeping/cleaning services.

Train staff.

Put corporates/companies on a retainer model.

Corporates will happily pay you instead of dealing with payroll, PF and such stuff.


11/ BONUS:


We all know what happened to the Better.com CEO firing all employees on a zoom call. That was pathetic.

Permanently scarred his image too.

That’s a record on the internet forever.

What if he could have prevented that from happening?

Business idea: Image consulting & management solutions

Target Audience: Celebrities, Politicians, Public personalities, etc.

Generally public personalities have a hard time keeping up with fans.

It’s also hard to be consistent and maintain their image and perception online.

You can start with B/C-list celebrities, politicians, and help them get their social media presence up and running.

You can offer makeover services on all aspects of a person’s image.

It’s only a matter of time once you get the basics of brand management right.

You’ll get word of mouth referrals within and outside the industry.

A lot of celebrities, politicians and personalities in public limelight need this.

They are also willing to pay top dollars for it.

There’s a lot of $$$ waiting to be taken in this field.

This thread took me a few hours to write.

If you got value from it, retweeting the first tweet would be greatly appreciated.

And if you want more content like this, follow me @theBuoyantMan on Twitter.

Thanks and have a great day! 🥂