Monday, March 17, 2008

Money Money everywhere

Ever since I took the LEM course with professor Handa, I am always on a look out for some business / venture which might interest me. The more I observe the more convinced I am there there is money to be made everywhere. You don't necessarily need a splendid idea that no one had thought of before. Find what people want and give it to them and they will pay. Let me give you a few examples

1. The chai and maska bun seller at gujarat university road.

One evening while on a stroll we went to this fellow. He sells just 2 things. Tea and maska bun. ( Ok he sells coffee as well, but thats besides the point) Now lets do a simple estimation based on what we observed in the 15 mins we were there. The charges are Rs 10 for a maska bun. A plain bun costs Rs 2.50, even assuming he justs puts 10 buns from a 100gm butter pack which costs Rs 15, butter costs Rs 1.50 thus total raw material cost = Rs 4. So assuming he is an entrepreneur and so he doesn't charge himself for his labour. Thus he gets a contribution of Rs 6 for each maska bun he sells. In the 15 mins we were there he sold atleast 25-30 buns ( yeah he is famous ) So lets assume he sells say a meger of 150 buns in a day ( though I think he sells much more, lets be conservative) So he makes Rs 900 a day. He has two helpers. Now labour who does work for civil and construction is paid between Rs 40-Rs 60 a day. Lets assume he pays these helpers Rs 100 a day. Even then he makes Rs 700 a day and in a month he makes
Rs 21,000 and all of it tax-free !!! Surprised ???
Where are all the software engineers ?? We think we make money :P

2. Visa-counselling service

When we were to go to Germany on student exchange, we were going to stay for 4 months and hence we couldn't go on a schangen visa, we had to apply for a long term student visa / residence permit. Now we had guidance from our seniors who told us to apply for a 90 day student visa and then convert it to a residence permit after reaching Germany. Thats what we did. Now some other friends of ours from another management institute decided it was probably better to go to a visa agency. The agency asked them their duration of stay and based on that asked them to directly apply for a residence permit. Nothing wrong so far, however the problem is that the consulate asked them to show as financial proof, a DD drawn on a German bank to the effect of EUR 7000 ( our total 3 month expense was less than EUR 3000) and so none of them ended up going on exchange. EUR 7000 is a lot of money to show even if you will not use all of it. All this when they paid the visa agency probably a 1000 bucks.
This got me thinking. This is actually a good business. All you need to do is, go to the websites of all the consulates and download forms, requirements for the different visa types etc. Now-a-days almost all consulate websites are self sufficient. Once you have this dossier ready, you are in business. Any time someone comes, find the safest option, photocopy the relevant info from the dossier, hand it to them and take you fees. NO visa agency will give guarantee and no one will expect them to either.

There are so many other seemingly "unglamorous" businesses which nevertheless make money !!

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