Home Business: 7 Ideas For The Budding Women Entrepreneur In You

Many women in this country want to work for a living, but find themselves in situations which doesn’t give them opportunity to leave their homes. But we women are creative and enterprising, hence running a home business is always an option for us.

Indian women are well-equipped at planning, and equally efficient at time management and resource allocation. And more than often, we work for free. Capitalizing on our years of enhanced skills as a potential home business idea should not make us feel shy or nervous.

Cautious we must be before emabarking on entrepreneurial journey, one of the primary concern aspiring home business owners have before launching their venture — capital involved and nature of infrastructure for the business.

Home businesses are an off shoot of cottage and small scale industry. There are multiple professions and small scale business, which frequently require women entrepreneurs as part-time or flexible partners, like weaving, shelling, zari and stitching work, daily shop accounting, cooking for caterers and more.

These businesses offer flexible work hours to women willing to reschedule their daily lives to earn for their own financial necessities.

There are two key factors that need to be paid attention before launching a home business — time is the most precious resource, and there is always a demand for personal investment, so one must be careful.

In this article, we have identified seven home business ideas for women which women can own and run without leaving their homes.

Start a bookkeeping home business

Bookkeeping is the profession of financial record keeping, where every receipt and transaction of a business is evaluated. Few decades back this entire task was done on paper.

But with advancement of technology, bookkeeping has become part of the digital world. Multiple e-commerce companies, retail business and firms based in smaller cities and fast urbanizing towns are always in search for a person who is good at maths and accounting.

Today’s bookkeepers generally work remotely and if a person wants to establish their own home business, all they need is a functional laptop and good command of Microsoft Excel or Google sheets and dedicate certain hours every day to maintaining the data collected and calculated.

Bookkeeping may sound hard, but it is a thriving business font. Bookkeeping has been a home business venture for women for decades.  Women are sought after as bookkeepers because of our stricter upbringing around budgeting and finance.

Women in this country have been working as bookkeepers for their families and family run businesses for a long time, sadly they have been unpaid and undervalued all this time. Hence, it is time to earn money from patriarchal expectations of this job.

The trick is to understand your geographic position, basic qualifications, employer’s time schedule and your own comfort zone. Don’t take up big projects if you are just starting out. Build your reputation with small successful projects, and then you can offer long-term services

Blogging is more than sharing thoughts.

Another overlooked home business idea anyone can do is blogging; there is a general misconception around blogging being the art of journaling thoughts online.

Blogging has been a women’s profession for almost two decades now, and it has become more relevant and diverse with time.

Writing blogs offers flexible working hours and needs no personal investment. And to start a blog, any women can just register their account on any site of their choosing like, for example WordPress, Squarespace or Wix, which offer you a free space.

Blogging is diverse and has branched into niches; niches are specific groups who read about certain topics. A blogger needs to identify their strength and readership goals before beginning their venture.

Blogging can bring money either in form of sponsor-partnership or client based project. Among the most lucrative branch of blogging are education and finance.

And most important factor new bloggers should remember, blogging is no longer limited to English language, but one can write in any language they are comfortable in and create a reader base. But the key mantra is consistency with credibility. 

Daycare services are a necessity of modern life

Not all women have the time to work in an office because of family obligations, and similarly not all working women can look after their children.

With the rise of two income households, the need for daycare services is growing in the urban spaces. But how does a home business idea for a daycare differ from an institutional daycare?

A home business daycare can be limited according to business owner’s capacity. The limited number of children admitted ensures that better attention and care is given to individual kids over, which is difficult in a larger group.

Starting a daycare will need an initial investment to buy little beds, chairs, toys, books and utensils for the little ones.

Fitness training can be your big home business idea

If being healthy is an integral part of your life, being a fitness trainer from the comforts of your home is not hard. Fitness training has many forms, yoga, in-person strength training, image and wellness coaching, and dance classes like Zumba or Fusion training.

Group fitness classes centred around yoga or dance are a crowd favourite among women client of all ages; as they are perceived as fun and feel less intensive than gym. Running a home based fitness business works well within community spaces where a lot of people from the locality are involved.

A home business owner can choose their own working hours, there is not much of a financial investment, but one has to keep in mind, the profession of fitness needs physical space and depends on word of mouth and can also be a seasonal business.

Teaching sector has evolved digitally

Thanks to infamous Covid-19, the educational requirements and needs have evolved beyond our wildest dreams.

In a country where parents are obsessed with their kid’s education, more and more educational sites are popping up. Coaching centres have shifted from concrete rooms to computer screens and are in need of teacher who can teach specific subjects.

From basic coding to communicative language to marketing, there is a class of students awaiting a teacher who can help them learn. Women with the qualifications can either enrol as a teacher or submit partnership proposals to these educational sites to launch their own teaching sub-branch.

Many of these e-educational institutes are looking for people with flexible time, some are scheduled early morning and some late in the evening to accommodate their student requirements. Hence, we advise reading the job specifics thoroughly.

But we must keep in mind, if we want to make more money than the initial payment offered; the job requirements meant to be fulfilled shifts to more incentive based goals.

Beauty industry is more than parlour

The beauty industry has evolved beyond our wildest dream, from an occasional skincare appointment a decade back to now, where it has become a culture of self-expression. Women and men are both indulgent and active participant in this industry now.

The grander the weddings and events of celebrations get, the more the demand for a makeup artist go up.

But beauty industry is not limited to makeup artists alone, we have hair stylists, mehendi artists, junk or imitation jewellery makers, lehenga makers, nail paint designers and more, who all form this industry.

Makeup artists can work from the comforts of their home as well as do client based visitation. And to work in this industry, one needs to be creative and hard-working.

Similarly, hairstylists and personal stylists can have one on one clients as well as group based clients. Sometimes you can be hired for the bride, other times for a private family function.

The beginning of this home business might be tough, and it can also have ups and down because of its seasonal nature. For makeup artists and other specific skilled artist, there is also an initial cost of investment, and recovering that cost takes a while.

Hence, the goal of the home based beauty businesswoman should be building reputation by word of mouth and getting recommendation.

Cooking classes are on high demand!

Again, thanks to the pandemic, people have begun taking active interest in food they intake and nutrition for a healthy life. Cooking is a life skill, but the burden of this skill has always fallen on the women of our society.

Women have acquired this skill with years of practice and hard work, teaching younger and newer cooks how to prepare home cooked meals needs no hospitality degree. All you need is a well stocked kitchen to hold the number of student you wish to teach and time.

Some cooking teachers also hire community halls to host larger number of students for specific preparations like, papad, jams, baking, spice making etc.

You can either carve out your niche of preparations to teach or do one on classes, the initial investment will be the cost of ingredients which can be negotiated between student and teacher.

Fear and doubt be gone

The biggest obstacle that one can face in their path to launch a home business is family opposition and self-doubt. Family may mean well with their concerns and warning, but running a business, not always about the financial benefits. Running a business is a medium to gain autonomy and empowerment.

Fear of failure is natural, and success won’t happen overnight. Each home business owner will up and down unique to them, so don’t let doubt in your skills stagnate you. So do not wait any more and start your venture.

Image Source: Still from the film English Vinglish and illusrations by sktechify free on Canva Pro

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