Small Business Idea: Online Garage Sale (#IdeaTuesday)

Ecommerce has redefined the customer shopping experience. From ease of shopping, multiple brands and options, easy returns and refunds, cash on delivery options to new technology innovations, there are enough reasons to get you addicted to online shopping. Hyperlocal ecommerce business model has now ensured the participation of brick and mortar stores and it seems to be the way forward ensuring express delivery and reduction in inventory costs.

Online sale of goods has boosted the buyer confidence in buying used products. Like never before, we are more comfortable and confident purchasing used mobile phones, laptops, furniture, toys, books and other stuff. There are several classified websites that let sellers list their used or new goods and buyers can easily contact and complete the purchase.

Startup Business Idea for Food Entrepreneurs: Campus Food Truck (#IdeaTuesday)

In the last few years, food trucks have become very popular in the US offering a twist of taste along with quick service and cost effectiveness compared to restaurants. The phenomenon is catching up in India too. De3 (Bangalore), Eat n’ Run (Mumbai), The Spitfire BBQ Truck (Bangalore), EGGJactly (Delhi) are some of the popular food trucks in India and the number of food trucks is on the rise.

Starting a Campus Food Truck Business is a lucrative idea for food entrepreneurs. Find a niche that suits the taste of college students and young professionals in your city, get a customized food cart or truck and spread the message on social media. Let students and professionals follow the truck schedule on social media – which day of the month will the truck be parked in a particular college or business center? Once the food truck gains popularity, let college and office groups invite your team for a campus food party.

Spend some time on your business plan. The name of the food truck, menu, pricing, design of the truck are all very important. You would be competing not only with budget restaurants in and around campuses and business centers but also street fast food vendors. Plan if you think you would need a business loan or financial assistance from friends and family.

And this comes with a bonus – it is much easier for the team to take a day or two off when you plan to unwind on a weekend holiday.

Startup Ideas and Execution

The number of start-ups in India is expected to grow from 3000+ in 2014 to more than 11,500 by 2020. From young graduates to experienced professionals and industry veterans, all are taking a plunge and scripting entrepreneurial success stories.

Today I woke up with 6 start-up ideas, potentially 2 of them what I considered to be path-breaking and million dollar business ideas. However as once told and what I now realize, Ideas in themselves are worthless. What makes them worth is the Execution.

In the past three weeks, I carried out a survey among my friends, colleagues and professionals. 

Startup review: Rime.co - unified timeline for multiple social media accounts

All of us have multiple social media accounts and profiles and we also keep a tab on what people in our various networks are posting and sharing. There are several apps and websites that help us manage our various accounts from a single interface. Buffer allows us to schedule posts to multiple social media profiles. Now we have our desi startup - Rime.co that plans to aggregate the information available on our various profiles making it easy to follow and share.

Rime is a platform which brings together all your creative content in one place. You can follow people, like and comment on any content available on internet. Rime collects and organizes web content that matters, and helps you to find people and explore new content.

Membership for the beta version is available on invitation. 

Startup Idea: Online platform for renting and sharing

Findings from a research done in 2004 done by the The Center of Future Studies, UK states:

• our need to own everything from a home to all its contents will have to change
• we are moving into an age of renting and sharing from one of buying
• in the coming years, it will be far more acceptable to rent anything from property and cars to electrical equipment and computer hardware

10 years since the research and the prediction seems to be coming true. There are a number of factors driving the need and acceptability of renting:

• A smaller world: the wide reach of social media and internet connectivity
• The younger generation has different attitudes to renting. They do not measure people's worth on the strength of their possessions alone and are more open to the idea of renting, sharing and lending.
• The growing desire to use and access everything available from technology, cars to high end products and services
• Sustainability: if we rent more, we would consume less and hence the need to produce less. Thus, renting leads to better utilization of resources (raw material, finished products, infrastructure etc.)
• A growing realization that we can't own everything we want