Starting a business is always great and never get old. The main problem with Nepalese house hold is that there are lots of questions sometimes arose from own mind, some from families and always some from the relatives and people. Mostly question that comes to our mind is “is it the right time?”. The problem with starting with business is not what the business is from your perspective only but from the consumer perspective. Usually where we look for our potential customers are from our circles and imagine it in larger scale and end up with only 10% of the large scale because we cannot actually generalize the small scale to the large scale.
Now, lets imagine I are in technology field and trying to start some technology base business. What I have in my circle is people know little about technology or have some knowledge about technology. Now we imagine the whole market based on that fact and we try to target that community but our market don’t have the scope where we are looking. So finding right customer and right business is first not just context of Nepal but everywhere around the world. Lets cut it short and move forward discussing great business ideas here in Nepal.
1. Teaching
What is best in the world and ever been is the teaching. It involves of transferring knowledge from one person to another via any medium. Anyone reading this article is at least a person who can browse through web and find this article. You do have knowledge in any field that you like the most. Teaching doesn’t always implies “Tuition” for some subject, teaching can come from teaching a school subject to teaching life style and manners and more over life changing things. Lets start with giving some base names for teaching:
– Tutor for School subjects(Tuition)
– Yoga
– Programming
The thing is that for teaching is you need to have proficient knowledge on your respective field. First if you are lesser confidence then you start with people in your own circle. Say you want to start tutoring on Yoga but you don’t have where to start, try it with your trustworthy friend or family who are interested in Yoga. It can be a single person of some group. Like you can ask your uncle or some friends if they are interested on Yoga and you would like to guide them. This is the initial investment of time so you will learn how to teach Yoga while tutoring others. Now after certain time of investment, you will certainly know how to teach other people since teaching other people is hard because two different person brain doesn’t work the same way. Once you get knowledge of tutoring, if you are already good at it you will already find the mistake that might happens in near future while tutoring others. During the investment phase you can even make videos of tutoring so it becomes easier for future yourself to learn and teach others.
Now next step is finding actual customer in interest. For that you will need to make additional circle as you already have a level of confidence. If you are in a luck your Friend or Uncle they might already find customers for you by the refer system they carry with them. But still the main problem is convincing people to get into Yoga. So, we just don’t random shoot at people for being our customer rather we research on need of the people. Detect who our potential customer can be, like girls are likely to be convinced because they are careful with their body figure. And to convince a girl, a women tutor in Yoga business is boon because girl prefer girl tutor by themselves and their parents specially in Nepalese community.
So here we learnt how can we enter a business, what sort of investment is required and finally how to find and who the customers can be are explained. On further ideas, we will be explaining in similar manner.
2. Food Truck
Everyone love food and what if food is great, we call it love. Food Truck is a great business with minimal investment. You just need a small amount of invest with the truck and the utensils that is required to make food. The primary target is everyone and not just the by passers who are just looking for some street food. The food truck can be specific niche or can be a generic Nepalese favorite. If you are fine by targeting generic then you should always mo:mo: and chowmien. But you may target certain niche like “biryani”. I love biryani. Suppose we are targeting biryani food truck then we need to consider both veg and non-veg people and go for Veterinarian, Chicken and may include Mutton biryani if goes within a certain price range that is affordable and look authentic. So lets point of things before going to business and finding the right customer.
First if initial investment on truck, utensils and materials required to start cooking but this is just basic on all field. Now a days, what people look onto is name and ambiance of the place. So lets start giving our food truck a cool name that look authentic. People like names that is cool, catchy and classic like “Biryani ChukChuk” or “ठेला de Biryani”. Just a made up name but anything catchy that captures the social media is always a great start.
Well we are good with a name, now lets create some good ambiance. The food truck with plain is nothing catchy. We need some setup so people doesn’t feel odd eating outside your truck rather feel like they are in special place. First the truck need to be clean, with proper management of waste and water. Now lets create the truck with great place to capture some photo so people who came by or waiting in queue can capture some photo and post around social media as we have already seen some great power of social media lately.
Now, since we are ready for going viral with good food, name and ambiance we need to select a proper location. It can be near your home or you can target some wide audience but need to select properly so we can host our truck the certain area. We can always start small but moving after success to farther location is bad business so if we are certain we can move, we move to near possible location so customer doesn’t change. Hosting a truck is hard because metropolitan might block the truck access to that area so lets get the truck to big area with space and then with proper management, we can pay for the space and make use for our truck. Remember, ambiance should maintain with the location.
3. Pathao or Bike/Car Sharing
Lately, customer as well and rider has been in ease with the great price and great availability of service among each other. If you have access to a bike or a taxi they you can easily register for the service.
Unlike other business, the investment is high but finding customer is easy and simple. Once you have access to the bike or a taxi, you can register on the program. Some people tend to apply to multiple services too but can be risky at times. Though these programs are mainly targeted withing valley but with time it might reach outside valley. Customer are the people who book through apps and they are auto with the area you are available at that time frame.
Make sure you provide a good hospitality to the customer as rating are based on your riding and hospitality. Learning people from this is also another perspective. You can learn about people, some people like them talking while some are silent. But incase of bike, being silent is the best hospitality as customer want ride to be focused, safe and elegant. If the ride seemed to be long and bumpy, make sure you ask basic question that doesn’t relate their personal information but rather talking about weather, road and some funny jokes are great to get a good rating.
4. Online shopping
Because of the COVID-19, people are going online and buying things. And trust is one of the biggest things that you offer the customer. But before starting with anything we must find a niche. And best online shopping site that is available is clothes, shoes and Chinese products because they can generate a whopping of 100% to 1000% depending on the use of the product. The market is simple if you have simple knowledge and power of social media. And yet it is complex because you need to consider what product, whom to target and how to target. So lets find out what online shopping business can be done and how it can be initiated. [Government lately might go for recording online shopping if the business is growing so making it small yet effective will be our primary goal.]
First you need a niche and lets say we are doing online clothes. Now lets get into people mind to find the potential customer and who we can trust. So who like clothes? A simple answer women in general and not that men doesn’t like them but if you checkout Facebook wall of a men and women, we can generally categories that women are more likely to look clothes than other people. So we will be targeting clothes to women of different age ranges with different clothes type. Like age 15-25, 25-30, 30-35 and 35 and above. We expect less for women between 15-25 to buy clothes as they are dared with money with no income but throwing the money in the range is a great just for the name. Next is 25-30, mostly women who are working and are able to buy clothes for themselves. Next is 30-35 are the clothes for women and child as they have power over buying themselves clothes and if they or near one has children in home, that’s a great calculation. And above 35 we try to target lesser people clothes since we don’t see market in them. So we are mainly focusing on age between 25-35 years. They are most intended to spend money on something because they have money in control.
Now, we know the age target we invest on clothes of the age as well as on children clothes. Then we need some cool name and logo with custom made bag that goes when delivery to the client.
And we want customers and it is quiet simple, we upload photos of all the dress in precise attractive manner so that people cannot take their eyes off. Say, if you have high margin always try to create offers like “Buy 1 Get 1 Free with Free Delivery”. Since delivery isn’t costly if you manage it yourself at initial and we already have a huge margin create providing free delivery is nothing but just the time. So posting them on Facebook marketplace, TikTok, Instagram and other social media easily catches market as it is free and greatly marketed based on their need and since we are targeting certain people we do it the similar way. But always make sure you write the price on marketplace or in the image itself and make it abit higher as women will intend to keep a bargain margin.
And last but not the least provide a great quality service to the customer. Talk polite, give a room for bargain, provide discounted numbers as it costs high and provide offers as if they will never get that from anywhere else(don’t force or say that you won’t find it anywhere, just provide them the numbers that you and customers are satisfied by). And always treat like they will return shopping to your online shopping next time. But we must be wary of online fraud so understanding the customer and confirming them before packaging items is a most.
5. Groceries and/or Meat Shop
And if you can mange time and some investment, Groceries and Meat Shop can be a great business. Finding great selection of vegetables and meat shop side by side is a great asset. Sometime people might go buy vegetable and might get attracted by meat and just by meat for the day. And to get meat they might need flavors like onions, garlic and more and they can buy from the same groceries beside. But still we need to respect the cultural aspect with some people and having two people running the two businesses will be another plus point. Like some customer might not like the fact who is working on meat shop provide service for vegetable shop.
So once you have investment, you need to find a potential location that can hold both groceries and meat shop yet looking different but being owned by single person or two. Then you need to make dealership with food and meat market for feasible price. If you can provide resources yourself at the start, it is a lot cheaper than having a broker from the market that delivers the resources to us. So always try to bring your material yourself. The margin is not huge and we need to price according to the market.
Everyone loves free goodies and providing free goodies like chilies and parsley are one of the common practice and you should never seem to miss that whenever possible. Always try to make look like the customer is winner with every price. This maintain good relationship with the customer. The free goodies can be vice versa on groceries and meat block. Providing random discount to regular customer makes people regular and might help other people attract. The discounts should never be display but rather given at random times with regular customer.
Unlike other business; rather than finding customers, customer finds your business. Once you are being found you always tend to compete with the market with good manner and the price. Remember good manner and the price.
There are many more business that can be done but the key to success is always a good relation to customer and understanding customer.