If it were not for the business opportunities online, 24-year-old MBA graduate Vinayak Malhotra would not have been able to sponsor his MBA degree. And he did not really have to work relentlessly for that. It was just a small idea with which he struck gold.

Last year, when Vinayak, who has just completed his MBA from KJ Somaiya College of Management, Mumbai, was visiting his hometown Delhi, he saw kids going crazy for a toy helicopter at Palika Bazaar market. “Most of these kids belonged to the families holidaying in India,” says Vinayak, who after looking at the popularity of the toy, clicked a few pictures and later posted it on the e-commerce portal eBay with a price tag of `700. “Within hours of posting it, someone from Chennai ordered it. I hadn’t even imagined that I would get such a quick response,” says the business graduate, who accidentally discovered a business idea.
“Getting the first order delivered was difficult and at the end I could just make `20 because of the expensive shipping charges. But I knew how to take it forward,” says Vinayak, who now owns his own store, The Flyer’s Bay on Snapdeal.com where he sells these little flying fancies for kids and makes enough money to sustain himself.
“I was also able to set aside a year’s college fees,” he adds, as he mentions that after tying up with an e-commerce portal shipping the products has become easier, cheaper and productive.
There are many more youngsters like Vinayak who are making big bucks with a little brainwork and help from online portals. Tying up with an established e-commerce portal makes their work stress-free.
A passionate artist Vidya Priyadarshini, who has recently completed her Master in Engineering from the US, did not know what to do with the paintings she had done in her free time. “Over time, I had accumulated a huge collection. I never painted with a business motive but I needed to dispose the old ones to make space for newer pieces,” says Vidya, who didn’t want to create her own portal as it would have required time, effort and investment. “Plus, a lot of paperwork is needed to create a personal online payment gateway and I didn’t want to do that,” she says.
And thus after a suggestion from a friend, Vidya opted to sell her water-colour, acrylic on canvas and charcoal paintings on the online portal Payupaisa.com.
“It made everything hassle-free for me, I just had to click good pictures of my artworks and share a minimal percentage of my earning with the portal,” says Vidya, who is doing good business now by just pursuing her passion.
And if we are talking business, we can’t leave out 24-year-old Gaurav Bhatia, a commerce graduate currently studying at ICWA, who admits to making more than `50,000 per month sometimes by selling watches online under the label Dezine Watches.
Gaurav says that till sometime back he was addicted to online shopping. “While I could find everything else in affordable price range, there was a dearth of good designs in watches that a student like me could afford,” he shares.
But before Gaurav could start selling the watches online, he had to do a lot of homework that included recce in the popular markets and malls and finding out places from where he could source raw material to produce interesting designs. Now, he has a small team operating from Chandni Chowk that assembles watches.
“If you are tech-savvy, you will get a million opportunities to make money online, you just need to have the right idea at the right time,” he concludes.