The people swept away the shelves ": what business is worth opening during a pandemic

Today we propose to discuss the following topic: "Business ideas in the south of Russia". We have collected and prepared a complete description of the business model and invite yours to express your opinion in the comments.

Small Business Ideas

After a period of prosperity, when those wishing to start their own business could do it relatively easily, a recession began. Business today is going through hard times, this is due to increased competition, lack of demand, problems with obtaining loans, etc. In order not to become an unprofitable one-day business, a fruitful idea is needed. The simplest solutions in this case do not always turn out to be correct.

Even a small business of your own can bring good income, but only if the entrepreneur realizes all the difficulties and advantages of his business. Starting a new business is always fraught with risks, but with a systematic and responsible approach, your chances of holding out at first and securely gaining a foothold in the market increase significantly. Realistically assess your starting capabilities, situation, partners' responsibility, external and internal factors.

In this section, we have collected a lot of small business ideas and tried to objectively and impartially describe their advantages and disadvantages.

The most profitable business in Russia today: TOP ideas

Everyone who wants to start their own business wants to know which business is the most profitable in Russia today. In this article, we will look at the most profitable areas and the most profitable types of business, some of which can be launched even today, during a crisis and with minimal investment.

The current situation with small business in Russia is deplorable. Someone has good ideas, but cannot implement them due to lack of initial capital, someone has financial capabilities, but is in search of a profitable niche or is stuck at the start due to bureaucracy, bribery, peculiarities of Russian legislation, etc. .

However, in spite of not the best economic and political situation in the country, it is quite possible to start your own business.

Nuances to consider before starting a business

The most promising business is the one to which you can completely surrender, that is, your hobby can turn into a good small business, something that you do with great pleasure. Do you have a good camera and love taking pictures? Collaborate with photo studios, shoot holidays, ceremonies, weddings. Sports fan? Open your section. Children are especially popular now. Can't tear yourself away from your computer? Become an internet entrepreneur.

There are actually hundreds of ideas, but later in the article we will take a closer look at 10 of the best ideas that will help you create your own profitable business. All prices are in dollars at the rate: 1 dollar = 70 rubles.

Which business is better? TOP 10 most promising options:

The coronavirus pandemic has dealt a devastating blow to Russian business - according to the Federal Tax Service, more than 66,000 individual entrepreneurs closed in March. But even in times of general stagnation, there are areas that have managed to turn quarantine to their own good. What business is it not too late to launch in order to make money on the forced "holidays"?

Trapped in the Moscow Region

General self-isolation has caused unprecedented growth in the food delivery segment - both ready-made meals and groceries. Conscientious Muscovites try not to go to the store once again and attack applications of all possible courier services. For example, from March 14 to April 5, Delivery Club's demand grew by 40%, from April 6 to April 12, the service for the first time fulfilled over 1 million orders per week, says its representative Alexey Belousov. The increase in demand by tens of percent was also reported in the press services of the express delivery services Yandex. Avka "and" Samokat ": for the latter, the number of orders only for the first non-working week increased by 40%, the average check - by 25%. In March, the company opened 20 collection points for orders and hired more than 1,000 couriers.

But if the delivery arrives at any time of the day or night to those who stayed out to wait out the pandemic in their apartments, Muscovites who are isolated in their dachas in the region (and there are many of them) have a hard time: neither Delivery nor Yandex ", Nor" Samokat "do not reach them. This was played by the service "Eat the Village", which delivers food from farmers from villages and villages: thanks to this audience, among other things, its indicators were 40% higher than in February and were almost 200% higher than the results of last March.

But if the delivery arrives at any time of the day or night for those who stayed out to wait out the pandemic in their apartments, Muscovites who are isolated in their dachas have a hard time

Ilya Elpanov has been familiar with farming for over 20 years, the founder of Eat Derevenskoye, nominee for the 30 most promising Russians under 30 according to Forbes in the Social Practices category - since childhood he helped his father manage a livestock enterprise in the town of Kimry, Tver region. In 2021, the father's enterprise went bankrupt, and Elpanov decided to revive the family business. Together with classmates from the Russian State Agrarian University. Timiryazev, he went to raise animals on the territory of the Nikola-Lenivets art park, but the undertaking brought only 500,000 rubles in losses. After the second business failure - the Smart Fox application for preparing schoolchildren for the exam - Ilya got a job as the head of the logistics department in the Elementaree subscription grocery delivery service.

The entrepreneur spied on the idea of ​​"Eat the Village" in America - a startup GrubMarket was already working there, which delivered food sets from farmers to the door. At that time, a fashion for local products also appeared in Moscow, but small farms could not deliver them directly to customers. “There was supply and demand, but there was no direct channel to connect them,” Elpanov explains. He moved from the capital to his parents in Kimry, closer to potential suppliers (now most of the partner farmers are from the Tver region), and personally traveled around the farms, got acquainted and negotiated work.

In the middle of 2021, the entrepreneur began sending boxes with basic farm products collected in his own kitchen to Moscow. In 2021, he attracted the first investors - business angels Grigory Rudanov and Vladimir Batishchev, who invested 1 million rubles in exchange for 8% of the company. The project worked smoothly and brought in up to 1.1 million rubles of revenue per month, but Elpanov wanted to scale and decided to change the model. Now customers got more freedom: they independently collected virtual baskets of products from several farmers and met the courier a day after the order was formed (for this they had to open a distribution shop in Dubna). I earned "Eat the village" on a commission of 35% from each order. The new format made it possible to arrange deliveries to online retailers Utkonos and Ozon, as well as to several restaurants and cafes.

A year later, the service attracted new investors - co-owner of Some Random VC fund Evgeny Timko and founder of the LiveTex consulting platform Vladimir Bakuteev. For two years, they have invested in the project a total of about 40 million rubles (the founders, as a result of all transactions, left 65% of the company). "Eat Dereveskoe" moved to a 600 sq. M workshop. m and built an internal structure - a procurement, quality control, category department, etc. Thanks to innovations in 2021, the company brought 180 million rubles in revenue and about 32 million in operating profit.

Plague Demand

The effect of the coronavirus "Eat the Village" was felt suddenly - on March 15, when only 63 cases of the disease were registered in Russia, but photos of empty shelves of offline stores have already appeared on the network. The website traffic and the number of orders per day increased by 30%, the average check - from 4000 to 5000 rubles. “People bought long-term products - potatoes, stewed meat, buckwheat. We haven't had cereals on our site for three days, ”Yelpanov recalls.