Side business ideas are the commercial opportunities that you can do parallel to your regular job or another business. Mostly, it is focused at establishing an extra source of income to have as backup. Here is a quick glimpse at all the ideas I try evangelising in this insight:
Why do you need to try side business ideas?
This is kinda necessary because we all saw what happened in 2020. Science is taking us towards growth and all but we are also facing a constant threat due to the experiments and the new domains that we are venturing into. So, it makes total sense to have multiple streams of income. Imagine someone in the textile business who has zero savings in march 2020 and zero sales for the next 3 months as the market was completely shut. How hard it would have been for them to sustain.
Tough to even imagine, right?
So, in this list of side business ideas – we have tried to cover sectors like real estate, digital income, FMCG and grocery sector, transportation industry, services based businesses, fashion and luxury, manufacturing, content, and so much more.
Side business ideas, 2024
Because every entry here is a potential side business opportunity, my focus has been on including only those side business ideas that can smoothly be operated by someone who has limited time availability on a daily basis.
So, be it students, working professionals, or housewives – everyone can find a suitable opportunity in this list of side business ideas in India in 2024. If you don’t find one suitable for you then you must head on to the mega list of business ideas with 277+ opportunities to try in India in 2024.
Impact Request: On a different note, please do share with people who have the caliber and intent to earn their income. Sadly, some husbands do not want their wives to start earning as then they might leave them. I have heard of such cases. Such a shame and a stain on society. Can’t believe we still have such a mentality in India even in 2024.
Anyways, if we do not take action, it will all be the same. So, if you’re a good husband, good brother, good father, good sister, good friend, good cousin, or good colleague then let’s share, and motivate our friends and family circles to try entrepreneurship and improve the quality of life they live, and create more jobs to help everyone thrive. Let’s create some real impact on the world around us.
1. Real Estate Investment Side Business
Real estate is an evergreen business and a good hedge over inflation. Yes, the prices do increase, and decrease abruptly but for a significant long time if you see the prices always go up. You must be thinking real-estate investments are huge, why are we discussing this on the list of side business ideas? And, you’re right. Real estate investment is pretty huge. But using crowdfunding platforms for the real estate industry, you can not only diversify your investments but you can also partially invest in properties i.e., the platform fully owns the property and you own equities in the platform and partially co-own the property as well.
If you are looking for online side business ideas, alternatively, you can plan to launch a crowdfunding real-estate investment platform of your own too. But this will need a due diligence, legal, marketing, and tech team. Once you have done the setup, this business becomes a self-driving side business. But to scale it big, not just this, to scale any business you need to give full-time attention to it.
2. Organic store Side Business
In our business ideas collection of top business ideas we spoke about manufacturing biodegradable cutlery, that’s what is an example of organic products. There is an organic alternative to everything that we consume or use on a daily basis. It’s just a matter of choice. A non-selfish choice. You can start an organic-only store to sell trans-fat free, toxin-free, chemical free eatables. It costs a little premium but appears cheap if you see the impact it has on your lifestyle and the world around you!
3. Develop a course aggregator website
Ah! You’ll need to hire a web scraper to aggregate courses from all other websites. A course aggregator website will have all sort of courses for students across geographies. Students must be able to browse description, curriculum, and review it from your platform. Purchase and transactions can happen on the main website. You earn affiliate income for every sale that happens. That is course aggregator website.
4. Build a lead generation side business
Services and products companies both need sales people. These sales talent in their organisations do prospecting to identify leads and sell their products and services. But often setting up these in-house teams at an early stage of business is a cost intensive deal. So, what businesses do? They partner with lead generation service providers to get a list of potential buyers and then they pitch to them. Lead generation side business ideas grow as your business grow older. Data of the leads is the real win here, the more data you sit on the more you grow.
5. Start a price comparison website
Price comparison website for electronic gadgets, apparels, and even grocery items drive millions of visitors. You can use a WordPress theme to start initially, and again put web scraping to use for real-time price scraping. These websites perform well if you also have a recommendation engine and API based transactions with the source platforms.
6. Start a newsletter business
Newsletters are new ways for publishers, writers, and creative people to monetize writing. One of the best side business ideas to start in 2024. There are different types of newsletters:
- Reporting newsletters, where you put forth news around events & latest developments,
- Analysis in a certain industry domain, maybe weekly funding and its impact on the startup ecosystem,
- Curation of information – best courses to upskill as a react developer,
- Artistic where you display your crafts & skills – best interior decoration tips,
- Practical – DIY or How To type newsletters, and lastly,
- Hybrid newsletters – a mix of all.
Use platforms like substack to start a paid newsletter.
7. Rent your Caravans, Cars, Bike (recreational vehicles)
We are in a sharing economy. Today, you can own a bike with digital lock. But if you are not a driver, most prolly, 90% of the time your car/bike/vehicle is lying idle. Not earning you any money, a liability! What if I tell you that you can turn this liability into money making machine. Yes, an extra stream of income. You can rent Cars & Bikes for trips, or simply as a ride-sharing vehicle. There are custom designed Caravans for recreational trips as well. They charge 30k to 50k for two night three day trip. It’s a profitable one-time investment side business idea, but multiple ROIs.
8. Rent your parking space side business ideas
Parking spaces are in demand near commercial localities which are either too crowded with automobiles or too narrow space in the streets to park a car. To start a parking lot side business idea, you either need to own the parking lot or you can look after the operations and management of parking lot on a borrowed piece of land. To open parking lot side business ideas in India, you’ll need a minimum budget of $20,000K (includes rent for the land).
More side business ideas
Here are 6 more side business ideas to consider which are easy to operate with low-capital and high ROIs:
- Start a freelancing business
- Open a sewing/tailoring business
- Try a home based manufacturing business
- Launch a consultancy business
- Online Courses Business
- Start a Grocery Delivery Platform
Again, if you are interested in more business ideas, then please do take a look at our article that covers more than 277+ opportunities in the mega business ideas list that I was talking about earlier. These opportunities are quite suitable to start in India in 2024. And do share the mega list link in your WhatsApp group and social media. Every effort towards boosting entrepreneurship in India counts towards nation-building. Jai Hind.
