I think if you’re working at a regular 9-6 job, or have some spare time, or planning to start something from the comfort of your home, the plan of how to start a business in india looks promising.

In fact, the thought to start something of your own, ALMOST ALWAYS pops up in your mind.

Think of all the chai-conversations you have with your colleagues, or thoughts churning in your mind, or browsing articles, or scrolling mobile phones — EVERYDAY!

Plus, with the COVID-19 crisis, I believe the pivotal question “how to start a business in india“, is now more important than ever.

To think about what can lead to a second income stream, and of course, gives you an opportunity to quit your existing job and take your venture go full-time eventually.

Firstly, it’s completely normal to be scared when you have these thoughts. I am referring to the road which can be a fickle one.

One minute you dream to start something, earn more money, quit your job, get business ideas, count your profits, etc. and within the next minute, thoughts of sticking to your job, fixed costs, monthly income, etc. can paralyze the dream of starting a business.

However, with zero room for discouragement here, I am about to show you the a step-by-step process of starting a business in india.

Keep in mind the road to start your own business can be done even while working at a regular 9-6 full-time job. That’s something I suggest everyone.

Unlike the fad promises by the startup culture here, to just “go with it” or “quit your job TODAY!”, I’d rather start something on the side, and then eventually keep an option open.

What do you think? Which route would you rather prefer?

I think you’re with me, so let’s move on. 

I will be honest and detailed throughout this article, but remember few things:

• Your primary goal should be to create a business that generates revenues, profits and paying customers, not “instagram likes“, or “hey, that’s an amazing idea!”. All other BS aspects later please
• Practicality first, emotions later. Don’t expect this to start thriving overnight. It will require work and commitment (hell, I’ll even tell you that with about 5-10 hours of work every week, you can expect to start something in as little as 6 weeks, that’s not a typo)
• I’ll make this super-easy for you, giving you a navigation of ONLY what is required, and cutting out all the sugary fluff! I mean, who wants to read another article of “top 5 ways to get instagram followers!”

So, feel free to toggle between the article as per your interest, convenience and preference.

Based on my experience, here are 3 simple steps that will significantly aid you in starting your dream business.

How to Start a Business in India in 3 steps (from scratch)

If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say that you are scratching your head behind that computer screen right now at the sheer brevity of the ideas. But hey, don’t worry. We’re going to explore all the above steps in excruciating detail.

Gentle reminder #1: You do NOT need a fancy degree to start a business. It’s OK if you didn’t do a MBA (I haven’t), or didn’t graduate from a prestigious college (I haven’t).

All you need is 1 idea that:

• solves a problem 
• has a target market willing to pay you

That’s it. Put that out on paper and hang it on the wall if you need. 

Let’s dive deep into it.

Step 1: Find a few profitable business ideas (that will work in india)

You got to trust me when I say this: there is no “PERFECT” business idea out there. No magic, no wish-list, no “please give me the recipe of the best business idea ever!”

The best people know there is a process to come up with ideas, refine it, test it, and then turn it into profit. And the first step is to flesh out some ideas.

Good news, I have few simple techniques which will allow you to come up with business ideas, automatically. 

I know, I know. It’s easy to say that you should just go out there and let that creativity overflow. But, I am being serious when I say that there is a systematic process to come up with a stable, reliable and a profit-making business idea.

How do you think Elon Musk came up with the idea to create a “floating” tesla cyber truck in his mind?

The most unique idea is within you. And, you can bring it to surface in a matter of 15 minutes by practicing one of the many techniques I will show you today. 

Sure, it may take time. And, chances are that it WILL take time. You get stuck in the middle but when you experience that magic eureka moment, everything will feel worth it, so trust this process, and let’s be systematic and methodical.

Alright, here’s a simple technique to come up with 10-15 ideas in under 15 minutes.

The 3 Detective Questions Technique

I love this technique since it doesn’t require you to go to Google and start searching on the best business ideas, or wait for inspiration to strike.

Instead, it takes into account your own natural skills and ability to turn that into a successful business.

Here’s how it works. Put your detective hat on, and ask yourself these 3 question:

1. What do your friends and family ALWAYS compliment you on?

2. What do your friends struggle with, that you find VERY easy to do

3. What would you do if you had three extra hours everyday

Let’s look at each carefully.

1. What do your friends and family ALWAYS compliment you on?

This is a great way to find out what you constantly hear from people all the time. 

For eg:-

• Your friend tells you “I really can’t believe how you finish your work so fast and systematic”
• Your aunt tells you “You just make any new dish super delicious to eat”
• Your school friend says “You’ve always been great in karate and martial arts”
• Your office colleague compliments “Man! You do the best data analysis and make visually appealing presentations!”

I was recently out with some friends, and one of them told me — “You have an incredible patience level!”

And a week later, I met another friend of mine who was running late. When she finally met me, she goes “Can’t believe how are you so patient in this noisy world!”

Now you see some common patterns emerge, start listening and learn about yourself. Ramit Sethi calls this the Seagull Theory, where if you constantly keep hearing something, you start paying attention.

In fact, one effective way is to see how you’re introduced to people. A school friend of mine always introduces me – “Meet Zubin, he was a star student at maths in our school. Always fast with numbers.”

Interesting!

Another friend of mine scored amongst the top 20 in our state for the entrance CET exams 10 years ago. His score: 198 on 200 — remarkable. Even today he is introduced to anyone “He was the guy who scored 198 in CET!”

By the way, I can see you complaining “But Zubin, my friends tell me I’m supportive and caring. But how do I turn that into a business?”

We will cover all of that. For now, we don’t want to think 6 months ahead. Let’s trust the process and take it one step at a time. The only focus should be getting our creative juices flowing and collecting it all together.

So, file all those things away which you can think of on your paper. 

2. What do your friends struggle with, that you find VERY easy to do

Ask yourself, what are some things that people around me struggle with often? Or what are some things I’m ALWAYS asked to help with?

Could be –

• Planning a trip and creating an itinerary
• Doing graphic designing
• Arranging a get together party
• Ironing your clothes
• Filing for their income taxes or audit
• Asking for advice on how to buy a new car

Put it all down.

3. What would you do if you had three extra hours everyday

Yes, what would you do if you didn’t have 24, but say 27 hours a day? How will you spend those extra three hours?

Put it another way, what would you do on a Sunday morning if you were completely free from your otherwise normal routine tasks?

Will you –

• Read blogs or newspapers? Which ones?
• Check some online certification courses on Big Data, Hadoop, etc.?
• Do a relaxed yoga session?
• Meet your close friends and discuss some new ideas?
• Search online for any camera equipments or go out to take some photos?
• Go to a networking event or a workshop?

Pen down all of those ideas.

Btw, here are other 3 techniques to come up with more ideas — The YUS technique, Flight technique and the Book Shelf technique, I have covered all here.

Step 2: Pick and Validate 1 idea

We’ve done some work here, so congratulations first! 

You have a list of potential ideas right in front of you, some look promising, some don’t. But how do you find out which to go after, and which to reject?

Nothing intimidating here, but I also want to make sure you don’t spend 6 months on an idea, only to find out it will never make you money.

That’s where validation comes in. You see, validation isn’t rocket science, or some heavy mathematical graph and model. 

At this stage, what you’re looking is to say “Hey, I think these ideas can be good to go, and these ideas just don’t look good at all!”

Here’s a complete article I wrote on how to do this step — You have an idea in mind, what to do next?

Guys, don’t worry, I’ll write about validation in detail in future articles, just to start with, the article above should be enough.

Don’t stress it. The key is to start with few simple steps.

Step 3: Find your first 1-3 paying customers

As of now, your idea looks good to you. You might also tell few of your family and friends who might think your idea is amazing, and suddenly you’re onto something.

The only problem is — your friends and family are not your market. Of course, they are going to tell your idea is a good one because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.

This is the step where you’ll actually go out looking for REAL BUYERS. Remember, we are looking for 1-3 paying clients. That gives us enough data and confidence that your idea holds weight, and there is good demand for it.

To identify who your true clients are going to be, ask yourself:

1. Who is my ideal client?

2. Where do they hang out?

Once you find who your ideal client is, finding their information and where they hang out becomes easier.

For eg: 

• Is your ideal client local restaurants? Zomato can give you the list of nearby restaurants
• Are you a graphic designer? Find 2-3 facebook groups for small companies who regularly post requirements on graphic designing
• Do you want to do content writing? A simple google search will give you a list of all marketing agencies who need content writers

In other words, niche it down to identify who your ideal client is EXACTLY, then reaching out to them, and I’ll show you how below.

So, once you know who your ideal client is, how do you get your first paying clients?

Back in the day, you had to wait and wait just for getting a meeting with someone.

Today, with sending a few non-spammy authentic emails, you should easily get your first clients.

By the way, check what I wrote here. Non-spammy. Authentic. We are pitched so many things everyday. 98% of it is pure spam. Yes, we’re not interested in buying loans, or insurance!! Yet, the same calls pitching you with the same things again and again!

Do you even give more than 3 seconds to it?

How do you stand out then? The most simple method is to be authentic. I’ll show you how.

Introducing The 5-Element Authentic Email

I’ve used these emails to get clients, high-paying jobs, consulting projects, and even meetings with high executives and CEOs.

This email has 5 critical elements:

a) A unique introduction or your hook? (If your first sentence sucks, nobody will read the complete email)

b) Your offering (What are you offering?)

c) Benefits (What are the benefits? In other words, what’s in it for them?)

d) A no-risk foot-in-the door question (Something like, “Will you be open to discuss?”)

e) A simple call-to-action (For eg: “Does Thursday, 2pm work for you?”)

Let’s see this in action:

Compose 20 of these emails to the above email script in one way or the other.

Chances are that you will receive 3-5 responses, maybe even more! Then, you will be able to pinpoint the needs of the people who respond to such emails diligently.

Remember: X emails = Y responses = 2 clients.

For example, after the end of this, you will be able to say — out of 50 emails I sent, 10 responded, and I got 2 paying clients. That’s how your numbers look like, and then we can talk about how to improve on that.

Beautiful! That’s the beautiful part of a system. You don’t do 100 different things, just focus on few key things, and ignore the rest.

And what if you find out that nobody is buying? Good news, you didn’t waste a lot of time. You simply cross that idea from your list, and move onto the next idea.

In other words, rinse and repeat the 3 steps in this article. That’s the beautiful part of this step-by-step system, which is that even if something doesn’t work, no problem. We don’t get paralyzed and get demotivated “My idea didn’t work!!!!!”

We simply do the 3 steps again with another idea to test which works

Here’s gentle reminder #2: starting a business is NOT rocket science. YOU can do this and more. All that your business idea is asking for is time, patience and well-thought-out planning. Starting a business in India is not that hard anyway. Repeat that to yourself and in no time, you will start believing this ambitious affirmation too.

What to IGNORE when Starting a Business in India

Glad you asked. When you come up with business ideas, it is easy to be swept up into the process, thus forgetting what you should focus on and what you should not.

And your master teacher Mr. Zubin here is a huge supporter of — distinguishing between what to do and what NOT to do especially in the beginning stages of starting your own business.

When I was starting out, I read through tons of articles, took hours and hours of advice from people, bought online courses, books, etc. so I have battle-tested on some priceless pointers about what I did NOT have to worry about when starting out. Here they are:

Registering a company

You can worry about registering your company later on and at a stage when you have found your initial 1-3 clients.

I am not saying that the registration of your company is the least of your worries because it is not. It will take time and a tall stack of papers. But first, you must establish a portfolio of few clients.

Startups in india

Look, I know. You are just bombarded with information on startups getting funded everyday. 

Venture capital, Round A, Seed round, blah, blah, blah…

But, to get started, do not be focused on that information. Good to know it, but not to worry on it. To get started, only focus on doing the right things, the 3 steps shown above.

Social media “get-rich-quick” baits

Don’t feel rushed into joining the noisy world of social media. In fact, the internet is flooded with digital marketing” gurus who will push you to do 100 things.

So, do not feel coaxed by Instagram and Facebook. They are here to stay. All the complex strategies like SEO, or Facebook Page, etc. can be worried about later.

Venture Capital, Investors and going to “Networking” events

All in good time, Mr. or Miss. business person-to-be.

I am not saying that you should not fret over these aspects of starting a business. I am just saying and possibly reiterating that the foundation of all new businesses starts with executing things which gives imeediate results.

I feel that our country has been able to concoct and cement the concept of networking events so well that there is no shortage of those.

Hiring people

You can begin hiring people at a stage where you have atleast 5-10 clients. We’ll talk about that later.

Start the hiring process when you feel that your business idea is long-term and fool-proof.

Renting an office

Yes, set your eyes on the place you are going to rent to be your office. But do not spend days fretting over what it is going to be like to work there and how you are going to commute to and from.

Btw, didn’t you hear? Work from home is the new cool.

Getting 100 clients

Setting unrealistic goals will never be in your best interest. So, let’s focus on successfully getting 1-3 clients initially who will love and swear by your service, no matter what.

Make 3 your new favorite number from now on.

Business cards, Website, Logos

It would be obvious by now that in my world, a terrific business idea is all I ever care about. Everything else will fall into place sooner rather than later.

Getting boxes full of business cards printed before your business has taken off is the kind of wishful thinking that will hurt you in the end.

And, paying a graphic designer to design a logo before you have had any success (for eg: 1 paying client) is going to distract you totally.

Don’t fall in that trap. Like I have said, focus on the key things, ignore the rest.

Very tempting I know, but let’s aim for permanent wins, not temporary success.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES, MORE EXCUSES!!!

Now that we have gotten it into our heads — the key to starting a business is really:

• following a step-by-step approach (focusing only on few 2-3 things)
• And of course, doing it
• And, avoiding the nonsense BS stuff you hear out there

Trust me when I say this — this phase you are in right now — of generating ideas, slicing and dicing it, testing it, and getting your first clients is one of the most rewarding phases in starting a business.

That being said, there are still some excuses or sentences that you will repeatedly keep on hearing. This is classic imposter syndrome.

I experience it, world-class athletes do, top performers do, and you will experience them too as well.

Excuse: “But, I don’t have time”

Starting a side-business while working full-time can be one of the most challenging things to do.

I get that.

I started my first side-business while working full-time too. And there are some insightful things I have learned along the way.

Here’s how to find time, what to avoid, and shortcuts to free up extra time every week.

Excuse: “I don’t have an idea”

I have tons of resources to get you started:

• Here’s a list of 70+ business ideas
• How to find business ideas
• Examples of real businesses from other indians

Excuse: “BUT, I don’t have money. How much does it cost to start a business in india?”

Most of the advice out there focus on what 100 things you should be doing. 

“Facebook ads, Instagram ads, influencer marketing!!!”

You don’t need any of that to get your first clients.

Our best tools are going to be — pen, paper, some online research, valid email, consistency, commitment of 5-10 hours a week.

Can you do that? I assume you just nodded yes. Great! Imagine me coming out of the laptop screen right now, and patting your back.

Job well done!

Oh wait, best of all, all of the above tools are FREE, isn’t it? You bet.

Excuse: “I’m not sure if my idea is good enough”

Nobody can. That’s the reason we’ve built a system. A step-by-step approach, which looks like:

• Generate few ideas
• Pick 1
• Test and Validate (based on demand, market research, etc.)
• Get your first 1-3 paying clients

If it works, great.

If it doesn’t — no problem. We simply cross-off that idea and move onto the next idea.

That’s the beautiful part of a system. If you ever get lost, you simply come back and follow the steps.

Excuse: “What if I’m not an expert?”

Well, neither was I. The important thing right now is to get started, and slowly over the period of time you will become one in your area.

In fact, you do not even need to know 100 things. You just need to be few things you think which can help your client.

Statistics and Data

I am a person who is a hard-core believer of data. If there is valid data, that gives you a huge confidence there is evidence to it.

So, one of the things I also did was detailed research, and so let me present to you some facts and figures from the actual articles published:

• The freelance army: Why many Indians are choosing part-time over full-time
• India has more than 15 million freelancers, next only to USA
• Majority of the areas where freelancers or part-time opportunities exist include content writing, software development, mobile app development, marketing, designing
• “Freelancing, till now, was thought of as a refuge for only those who weren’t able to find full-time jobs or needed flexible working hours. But that doesn’t hold true any more. What, till a few years back, wasn’t the first go-to option for many is fast becoming a sought-after employment choice. And there are several reasons behind it. Downsizing by companies is one of them”
• India contributes 1 in 4 freelancers — think about the massive opportunity you have to earn more money

Conclusion, and your next action step to get started TODAY

Well, there you have it.

I have given you a rudimentary outline of how you can reach a point at which a vague yet strong business idea will start to root in your brain.

An understated perk of starting a business is that you can do it while doing your current job. That’s why starting a side-business is one of the best things you can do right now.

In fact, you now also know what to focus on and what to NOT focus on. I’d have killed to get these type of insights when I started out.

If you’re getting started, the first step is coming up with ideas, and you have a ton of techniques as shown above to flesh out atleast 10 ideas.

No waiting for motivation, or doing it “some other day!” 

Go through the techniques, and boom — you have a ready list in front of you.

To start a business in india is one of the best investments you will make right now. A side-hustle combined with your existing skills to monetize it, I believe is something you will ENJOY doing it everyday of your life.