1. We go through a long list of small business ideas that you can implement in India in 2021. If you want to receive more small business ideas for India directly to your mail, sign up to our newsletter!

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   Disrupt a High-margin Business Through Counter-Positioning

   • Fragrances

     • Look at what ‘Fogg’ did to the deodorant market in India. In a market obsessed with status, they counter-positioned on cost and quickly became the largest player.

     • Check out what Musk & Hustle is doing in the US. Taking high end smells and selling them at a fraction of the cost.

     • Fragrance Making Kit for people to make their own unique fragrances.

   • Dietary Supplements.

     • Relatively easy to contract manufacture - I’ve seen 70% Gross Margins on these. Current distribution models through pharmacies can also be disrupted through D2C.

     • Ritual, Hum Nutrition, Persona Nutrition, Rootine, Binto, and more in the US market all have strong positioning that differentiates them from dominant players like GNC, Amway, etc.

     • In India, Supp, Power Gummies, Unived and maybe a few others are trying the same game but I don’t think they’ve nailed the positioning.

     • We have a few thoughts on this, email us if you’re interested in exploring it further.

   • Laundry Detergent

     • Home & Fabric Care is Procter & Gamble’s largest Revenue & EBITDA contributor and is slated for growth .

     • The Better Home counter-positioned on Sustainability to reach 1cr Monthly Recurring Revenue in 3 months during the Pandemic.

     • Blueland is doing something really interesting in the US with Tablet based home cleaning products which eliminates all single use plastic.

       • I had to read this unboxing article to really understand the product.

       • Blueland was pitched on Shark Tank and valued at $9 million. Even Kim Kardashian was impressed by it.

       • I weirdly also found Toothpaste in tablet form. Seems to be a trend starting in the US to avoid single use plastic.

   • Can you think of more? If so, please email and let us know!

Cohort Based Learning

• Start your own cohort based course for a niche where you excel.

  • For example, my wife does small courses on Gardening.

• Build a Platform to help Cohort-based educators better engage with their communities.

  • Gagan Biyani is building one right now.

  • But each subject niche would have different needs. Finance and Design communities would find it difficult to use the same platform.

Zoom & Notion Apps

• Zoom has 300 million daily active users (DAU’s) (or doesn’t) but only 37 apps on its platform.

  • Huge potential here once the API is fully available.

• Notion has 1 million DAU’s (in Jan 2020) and is planning to open its API’s sometime next year.

  • Not as big as other apps but I’d rather work in a niche.

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Strava for other Sports/Activities

• Strava is a social network for (amatuer) athletes that has become insanely popular.

  • I use it every single day.

  • I got addicted because of the social/competitive nature of the app where I could compete with my friends/enemies.

• Can you think of another sport or activity that isn’t being serviced well by Strava or any other app?

  • Rock Climbing is an insanely popular sport but I don’t know of any universally used social app for the sport.

    • Mountain Project used to provide an Open API with User Generated Data which you could have used to easily populate your app. Sadly it no longer exists.

  • Equilabs does it for horse riding.

  • Birdwatchers love to tick birds in their bird books (?).

    • There are a bunch of bird watching apps. But can you execute better?

    • Is there a popular bird watching app in the Validated Ideas list that’s rated really badly?

  • A Skydiving community for people like Sajid?

  • Can you think of more? If so, please email and let us know!

Start an Amazon FBA Business

• We did an episode with Rishiraj from Republic of Sellers on how he built a $300k revenue ($100k profit) Amazon FBA company in 1 year - you should also check out the website, lots of information on ecommerce.

  • Listen to the episode here.

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Buy & Consolidate Small Amazon FBA or Ecommerce or SaaS Businesses

• Use websites like Micro Acquire, Empire Flippers, Shopify Exchange Marketplace and others to buy small businesses.

  

  Mukund Mohan @mukund

  Investors pour $1bn into buying up small merchants on Amazon $MWK

  

  ft.comSubscribe to read | Financial TimesNews, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

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  • Companies like Thras.io & Sharma Brands are building portfolios of small Amazon and other ecommerce companies.

  • With economies of scale, you can automate processes, find marketing/operational efficiencies across businesses, and just get better at the game than each individual company.

Zero Fee Marketplaces

• Most online marketplaces (think Zomato, Swiggy, Amazon, etc.) have a large take rate for every order that is placed on the platform - it can be 20-30% for food delivery.

  • A counter-positioning opportunity exists by not charging this take rate on every order.

  • An example I love are the zero/low fee ETFs started by Vanguard in a counter-positioning move that completely changed the investing landscape in the US. Check out the basic story here.

• Dukaan, an example of a Zero-Fee marketplace in the MSME space.

• Zerodha is a Low/Zero-Fee Marketplace for Equity trading.

• Do you know a market with high distribution or transaction fees that can be disrupted?

Make in India Marketplace

• Like GeM but with a B2C focus.

• The Better India tried something like this with ‘a curated marketplace that will benefit micro, small and medium enterprises, self-help groups and NGOs’.

Check out this list of 5,000 ‘Validated Ideas’.

• “List of android apps with 100k+ downloads and ratings lower than 3.2.”

  • Basically Good Ideas but Executed Badly.

  • It costs only $3.99 - we’ve bought it and there are many good ideas - we don’t want to deprive the creator by just showing them.

Other Ideas

1. XimiVogue, Daiso and Miniso type stores in India and the subsequent supply chains.

2. Lego Trading - Collectibles in General.

3. Leasing/Buying Vacation Homes and renting them out on AirBnB & Saffron Stays.

4. Co-working 2.0 for remote workers combining long stay rentals along with a connected co-working space. 

5. Turning online communities into physical communities in vacation hotspots or Tier 2 cities.

6. Community Building for brands using apps such as Tribe.so & Circle.

7. Software products for Sport Teams & Scout Management to recognise young talent.

8. Software for Fund Managers to rank companies based on Environmental, Social or Governance metrics.