TOP 7 profitable business ideas

Business ideas that are profitable, or ideas that no one believed in? Brave Russian entrepreneurs have mastered unoccupied niches (joint purchases, ice cream parlors, quests) and they paid off!

According to the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the share of small business in the country's GDP by 2020 should increase to 30%. In total, SMEs will account for at least half of the gross domestic product. Such forecasts are not unreasonable: every year there are more and more successful business ideas for small businesses, which are implemented by entrepreneurs not only in various Russian regions. The most original and profitable ideas of entrepreneurs will be discussed in this article!

Not by bread alone ...

• Idea: sturgeon farm
• Entrepreneur: Victor Kozemsky
• Region: Belgorod region
• Description: In 2014, in the Gaivoronsky District of the Belgorod Region, the construction of a farm for growing sturgeon fish in closed water supply units (RAS) began. The enterprise was named "Belosetr" and, according to the creator, was designed to produce up to 0.5 tons of caviar annually, starting in 2017.

Previously, Kozemsky was engaged in fish farming in Donetsk, after which he decided to launch a project unique for Russia - a fully automated sturgeon farm. Kozemsky and colleagues have been developing equipment for keeping and feeding sturgeons for over 10 years, using their own developments.

At the moment, the plant has more than 7 tons of brood fish at its disposal. The company also has a fry growing workshop, that is, at the moment, the implementation of the second stage of a large-scale project has begun. At the end of 2015, the company sold:

• 0.2 tons of black caviar;
• 1.5 tons of fish.

Let's remind that the average cost of 1 kg of black caviar on the Russian wholesale market reaches 28-30 thousand rubles. Now the farm plans to start producing 2 tons of sturgeon and sterlet caviar by 2018.

Interesting: According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the export of Russian black caviar in the past year increased threefold and reached 4.71 tonnes in the 1st - 3rd quarters of 2015. The reason for this is the active development of sturgeon fish production and a favorable market environment amid the depreciation of the ruble.

Small wholesale: earnings on savings

• Idea: online store in Cash & Carry format
• Entrepreneur: Elena Drovovozova
• Region: Moscow
• Description: In 2014, Elena Drovovozova, a former lawyer at the multi-format trading company X5 Retail Group, founded an online cosmetics store in a format similar to Cash & Carry. The store was named BeautyDiscount.ru and offers its customers retail and wholesale cosmetics at a discounted price. The idea of ​​crowdshopping was taken as the basis for creating the store. In order to save money on the purchase of goods and delivery, people unite in groups and make a joint purchase.

At this stage, the store's assortment includes more than 20 thousand goods. According to the Alexa Rank, the store is ranked 260,378, it is viewed daily by more than 9 thousand people, and the average resource cost is estimated at just over 9.6 thousand US dollars. The success of the store is due to the growing popularity of joint purchases (they account for almost 40% of the turnover). Most profitable startups are somehow connected with crowdshopping (Rentoid, Uber, etc.), but in Russia the niche is not yet occupied, and therefore everyone has a chance of success!

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DIY: Basic Cooking

• Idea: food designers
• Entrepreneur: Olga Zinovieva
• Region: Moscow and Moscow region
• Description: In 2014, a former McKinsey consultant created a home delivery service. Its peculiarity is that the products are intended for the preparation of specific dishes: washed, peeled, cut. The sets come with colorful step-by-step recipes that allow you to prepare gourmet meals in 5 to 30 minutes.

Grocery packages are delivered twice a week when you subscribe online. The menu for each client is compiled individually on the basis of a preliminary survey. In just a month of work, 120 thousand residents of the capital became participants in the project, which brought the company more than 1.2 million rubles. (according to RBC).

The idea to create a food constructor came to Olga while studying at Harvard Business School. She immediately interested the head of the Boston venture fund, Laurence Lepard. The fund invested 200 thousand US dollars in the project in exchange for a 10% stake in the business.

In 2016, the Elementaree project managed to raise over $ 500,000 from an undisclosed international investor. The funds received will be spent on the development of the platform (automation of business processes, scaling). The creators are planning to create a full-fledged alternative to offline supermarkets within 3 - 5 years.

How to Wash Money: Making Laundromats

• Idea: self-service laundry network
• Entrepreneurs: Pavel Glushenkov, Oleg Maslennikov
• Region: Krasnodar region
• Description: In 2011, former law enforcement officer Oleg Maslennikov, inspired by self-service laundries popular in the United States, opened the first laundry in Krasnodar. At first, the entrepreneur faced problems, for example, he selected the wrong equipment (washing machines with a load capacity of 6.5 kg did not meet the needs of customers). But he successfully chose a place in the new shopping center, which allowed him to save on advertising.

In 2014, having 2 laundries in Krasnodar and 1 in Omsk, the entrepreneur decided to develop his business. At this stage, he was joined by Pavel Glushenkov, who had previously developed his network of laundries, the first of which was created by a franchise. At the moment, the network has 15 points in the regions, including Moscow. 8 of them are located in the premises of the Magnit chain stores, which are popular in the Southern Federal District.

According to RBC, the maximum income from one point can reach 350 thousand rubles, and the net profit (excluding the cost of rent, household chemicals, taxes, the cost of utilities) is about 120 - 150 thousand rubles. According to entrepreneurs, it will take from 2 million rubles to open a self-service laundry, and the payback period reaches 3 years.

Games that people play: quests in reality as a source of income

• Idea: quests in reality
• Entrepreneur: Sergey Kuznetsov, Bogdan Kravtsov, Timur Kadyrov
• Regions: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod
• Description: in 2013, the first quest room appeared in Moscow - a room for playing missions with a planned plot. Bogdan Kravtsov, who previously worked as an IT specialist at Yandex and Artemy Lebedev Studio, was inspired to create a quest by his favorite PC game, Skirmish, as well as by successful examples in Europe and the West.

In partnership with friends who owned a firm for the production of board games and souvenirs, Kravtsov began developing scenarios for the first two games: Psychiatric Hospital and Sovetskaya Kvartira. The entrepreneurs managed to create scenarios in just a couple of evening, and the amount of investments for opening the first quest room, according to Forbes, amounted to 500 thousand rubles.

At this stage, each quest-room of the Claustrophobia network brings in about 1.1 million rubles. monthly. The first franchises were sold in 2014. Their cost was 150 thousand rubles, while the amount of royalties ranged from 10% for the regions to 15% in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In a difficult economic situation, profitable business ideas should be targeted at people who do not have the ability and funds to travel abroad. After all, they will look for entertainment in their city. And in these conditions, quests are the optimal solution!