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Indian women have got out of their homes and gone on to run global corporations. Some have started companies that have become iconic. With a changed business environment, more and more women in India are looking at entrepreneurial opportunities. Here are 50 businesses one can start with ease and grow fast—and over a dozen women entrepreneurs who have done it.

EVENT MANAGEMENT
Startup Cost: Rs.10 lakh-Rs.15 lakh
RoI period: 1-2 years

This sector is huge, highly competitive and around 20-years-old. Yet, if you have good organizational and selling skills, this could be a great opportunity for you. Everything depends on the client’s requirement and services range from promotions, brand merchandising and seminars to conferences. Today it’s a multi-crore industry, with a city like Bengaluru alone having 300 event management companies.

You can open a niche firm catering only to fashion shows and conferences. You can also supply in-house add-ons as event management requires production arms, creative teams, and celebrity management personnel. Your opportunity lies in making these verticals in-house and offering it as a packaged service.

APPAREL DESIGNING AND SOURCING
Startup Cost: Rs.3 lakh-Rs.7 lakh
RoI period: 3-5 years

The apparel design and sourcing sector has a range of opportunities depending on how much you want to scale and whether you want a serious venture out of it or just an occupation. The industry has moved on from being just sequencing and embroidery to becoming a huge exporter of apparels to the western world as well as producing a slew of Indian-bred designers with independent labels. Get into the market at least once in six months and see what’s there in terms of your competitors, suppliers of fabrics, embellishments and dyers.  The first five to eight years are all about learning.

You can open a store, retailing your own label or sourcing labels from a variety of designers, or be an apparel consultant by tying up with existing designers; bring your moneyed clientele to them and tell them what to wear!

You can also work as a stylist to complete the look of a designer’s collection or export local talent to the world market. You can also tie up with a few MNCs and work as an in-house consultant for their regular travelers, designing clothes for those important business meets.

Spotlight: Apparel Designer Michelle Salins

WELLNESS
Startup Cost: Rs.25 lakh onwards
RoI period: 1.5 years

Though this is just a five-year-old industry in India, it is fast-growing. Higher disposable income within the well-traveled upper middle class, coupled with high stress levels, has created a need for spas. Though unorganized, the sector is flourishing with many niche spas mushrooming as standalone entities, and not necessarily attached to hotels and resorts. While most training academies are abroad, India does have a few spread over Mumbai and Pune, where a course costs between Rs.30 lakh-Rs.1 crore.

Apart from opening your own spa, you can also train as a therapist and then impart this training to others for a fat fee. You can also supply products such as essential oils, scrubs and body washes to other spas. Again, someone has to make sure that the spa towels are clean and all the equipment sterilized. You can become an outsourced housekeeping partner and take care of this aspect. You can also become a spa consultant, though this is only possible once you have experience in running a spa.

Spotlight: Spa Specialist Kala Nehete

SELF-DEFENSE TRAINING
Startup Cost: Rs.2 lakh-Rs.5 lakh
RoI period: 1-2 years

This is an industry that’s really tiny and niche. With crime rates and robberies on the rise in metros, the need for self defense has increased greatly. However, most oriental martial arts academies in India focus on ring fighting which is ethical, rather than teaching clients to handle street fights which require a certain alertness of mind, and the ability to handle surprise elements.

With more women working in various fields and on the night-shift, there has been a spate of workshops and crash courses, yet the service has not reached its potential. Moreover, there lies a huge opportunity to teach self defense practices to underprivileged people, who encounter street fights more often.

This sector has more social than economic entrepreneurial opportunities. You can tie up with gyms to impart training, or open your own institute. You can also tie up with MNCs, BPOs and hotels to conduct workshops there, focusing on evacuation drills, self-protections tips and how to handle injuries.