How to Start an Online Business in India from home?

Looking to learn how to start an online business in India from home? – Then take a paper to take notes and pay attention to what I have written for you.

Why start an online business?

Have a great idea and want to start an online business from home? Take the plunge. There’s really no need to be hesitant about it.

It has never been easier to be an entrepreneur. The scope of doing commercial transactions online has expanded business opportunities. You can literally start an online business from the comfort of your own home with very little investment.

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Definition For Clarity: E-Commerce As Online Business

By e-commerce, we mean business done electronically using the internet. I am going by the Oxford Dictionary definition here.

The product or service on offer can be anything. The customer can be another business or end-user. If the transactions happen online, it’s e-commerce.

India’s E-Commerce Market: An Overview

Let’s convince you with numbers. Maybe that is the boost you need to make your final decision.

Trusted statistical site Statista informs that the market value of India’s online business in 2017 was US$ 39 billion. Its projected value in 2020 is US$ 64 billion. By 2027, India’s online marketplace will likely be worth US$ 200 billion.

Just as a point of reference, at the time of writing this article. US$ 1 = INR 76. Clearly, it’s a lot of money we are talking about.

In 2017, India had 437.4 million internet users. Online sales in India that year amounted to US$ 224 per user. That’s slightly more than INR 17,000 per user, as per the exchange rate at the time of writing this article.

The number of internet users in India increased to 525.3 million in 2019, making India the second-largest internet-using country in the whole world. Only China had more internet users.

The projected number of internet users in India by 2023 is 666.4 million. Growth prospects are clearly there for the online Indian marketplace.

The “How-To” Of Starting An Online Business From Home

What you need to start an online business from home is an idea. An idea about an unmet need in the market. there are hundreds of online business ideas for beginners to start from home.

What Is An Unmet Need?

A short story written way back in 1936 by the reputed English author Somerset Maugham gives a perfect idea about what an unmet need is.

A conscientious church caretaker gets fired by the new vicar. Because the caretaker is illiterate and the vicar thinks that is an assault to the prestige of the church.

To deal with the shock of a firing that appears to be completely incomprehensible and unfair, the caretaker goes looking for a cigarette shop for the first time in his life. After walking for a while, it hits him that there are no cigarette shops on that entire stretch.

He starts his new life as a tobacconist in that area. He roams around London to identify other underserved streets. He continues to expand his shops and soon becomes a rich businessman.

That is what your idea has to relate to – an unmet need. You need market intelligence for that.

However, it also has to match your own interests and drive. You’ll probably hate doing business in something that doesn’t excite you at all.

A Story Closer Home

Oyo Rooms. Sounds familiar? A young Indian from a remote village in Odisha became the poster boy of Indian entrepreneurship by the time he was 22.

Ritesh Agarwal: that’s the young man behind Oyo rooms. His own experiences with the lack of budget hotels that people could trust and book easily prodded him to start his business.

The initial idea was simple: find budget hotels, ensure a few basic safety and hygiene aspects, and give them your brand name in exchange for online booking, review, and rating facilities.

Attract customers by highlighting what Oyo means: those same hygiene and safety aspects that you’ve checked and ensured.

The unmet need that Ritesh addressed was: budget hotels that people could trust and the ease of booking them over the internet.

Conduct Your Own Primary Research

You do not have to walk around or travel through the country to identify an unmet need. Nor do you have to hire a market research agency.

But you do have to do your homework. On the internet. Even when you are sure that your idea addresses an unmet need, double-check using these simple steps:

• Search the internet to understand your market better. Suppose you want to start providing online dancing lessons. Do a Google search with just those words: online dancing lessons India.

See how many results you get immediately. Check out what type of dance lessons they are offering. Is your idea unique? Be honest with yourself on that.

Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Quora – these are all great searching sites. Provided you know what to search for.

• Keep a quantitative focus in your research to start with. How many sites already offer the product or service you are thinking of? How many views/ subscribers/ customers does each of these sites have? How many years have they been in business?

These are some of the basic questions to start with. However, you will have to determine your own questions to suit your business idea.

• Look for growth projections. There are many statistical sites that will offer you a good idea about how the market is currently behaving. Also about how it is likely to behave over the next 3-5 years.
• Use your social network to ask qualitative questions about your online business idea. Formulate your questions carefully and ask the right audience. You will get important insights.

“What do you find most irritating about (your business idea)?” That is a good question to start with.

Do Your Own SWOT Analysis

This is a tool that continues to be a favourite in the world of business and management.

It’s a simple, easy-to-use tool. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – that’s what SWOT stands for. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to an enterprise.

Use the market intelligence that you gather from your preliminary quantitative and qualitative research to do your own SWOT analysis.

What do you think are the strengths of your business idea? What are the weaknesses you can identify? How can you address those weaknesses?

Opportunities and threats relate to external factors. What are the existing gaps in the market? Every gap you have identified is an opportunity for you.

Your competitors are your threats. So is any prediction of a potential market slowdown. You have to weigh the threats carefully to consider the extent to which you will be able to turn them around into opportunities for you.

Do Your Own PESTLE Analysis Also

This relates to another set of factors that will be beyond your control. That is why it is so important to study them carefully before you take the plunge.

• Political: Is the political climate in your region, the country, and the world stable enough for business to happen smoothly?
• Economic: Is the economy, nationally and globally, strong enough with good growth prospects to support new enterprises?
• Sociological: Which social milieu do you want to target as potential customers for your business? Do their spending patterns match with your business idea? How do their online purchasing habits impact your business idea?

This is where your qualitative research is of great value. If you have asked the right questions, you will have the answers and strategize accordingly.

• Technological: The kind of technology you will need to float your online business. If you plan to open an e-commerce store, you will need technologies like Shopify or WooCommerce etc.

You need to find out the kind of upfront and ongoing expenses these platforms involve. Are you tech-savvy enough to maintain it on your own, or will you need continued support?

If you are thinking of online tuitions of some kind, you may want to explore platforms like Skype or Zoom. Or even simple YouTube videos to start with, if you are ready to wait for a while before the money starts flowing.

• Legal: What are the legal compliances that you must ensure to start an online business? It is best to take help from professionals on this count. You wouldn’t want to be caught on the other side of the law.
• Environmental: A growing number of consumers all over the world are environmentally sensitive these days. If you can pinpoint the environmental sustainability aspects of your business idea, it will draw customers to you.

Top-10 Online Business Ideas To Start From Your Home

1 If You Are A Techie, Become A Web Designer

They are always in demand. However, make sure that you keep enhancing your knowledge and skills as the market evolves. As you develop your skills, you may be able to offer other IT-related services also.

2 Start Online Tutorials

Choose what is in demand and matches your skills and interest. In due course, you may be able to offer full-fledged digital courses. Provided you have some interest in curriculum development and teaching, that is.

3 Be A Virtual Assistant To Small Businesses

As a writer on their blog, or for their accounting needs, doing online research for them … it could be anything. Where their demand and your skills intersect, basically.

4 Become A Specialized Retailer

Specialized retailing is an equally good idea if you have identified a gap that you would love to fill. India is a huge country and there are unserved or underserved niche markets in a variety of areas.

5 Start Affiliate Marketing

All it involves is promoting the products of a particular brand, or several brands for that matter. Just be careful not to promote rival brands. Also, you’ll need to have a basic idea of SEO (search engine optimization) to be effective in this business.

6 Become A SEO Marketer

If you are good at understanding the SEO scene, you can sell that skill to small and medium-sized businesses. Even to nonprofits, who often do not know why they don’t feature on Google’s first search results page despite doing awesome work.

7 Become A Blogger

If you are passionate about writing and have reasons to believe that you have writing ideas and skills that will attract readers, start your own blog. There are ways to monetize it.

8 Be A Self-Published Author

On Amazon. That is not very difficult at all – if you have been thinking about writing a book. It is better if you’ve already validated your idea in discussion with friends, family, mentors – whoever.

If you can use your social network to sell 200-300 odd copies in the first week, Amazon will take over the promotion for you.

9 Become A Seller On eBay

It’s lost its charm in the new world of Shopify stores, but eBay still has a fairly large customer base. You can check your business acumen by doing business on eBay before you think of launching your own e-commerce store.

10 Become A Social Media Consultant

Love social media? Do you think you’ve spent enough time to gather insights about the online behaviour of people? Are you confident that you could help people plan great social media campaigns?

Offer your insights for a fee. There won’t be a dearth of takers if you truly have great campaign skills for social mediaEndnote. If you’ve been toying with the idea of starting an online business from home for some time, get started NOW.

Give us the pleasure of acting the catalyst and go use the how to start online business from home tips we shared above. Click here to learn more ways to earn online.

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Start now. Plan well. Execute with discipline.