Hello rodinhooders,
I am a programmer. I create web and mobile apps for a living, but I’d like to create a product which could help small and medium businesses.
The problem is, I am all out of ideas. Whenever I get an idea, never has a customer said he’d be willing to pay for it. May be I haven’t communicated my ideas clearly, or maybe they really sucked.
So, after looking for two months, I’d like to ask you all, What are the problems you face or solutions you want for which you’d be happy to pay (Somewhere around Rs. 500 – Rs. 1000 a month) if someone solves it.
How about this problem? 🙂
I prefer to create websites but also have enough experience to create mobile apps.
Would love to get an idea which enables businesses run offline to leverage technology to run their businesses even better.
Thank you so much for you help!
P.S. I don’t mind having competition in the field.
Vasudevan Uppili
Dear Shobit, I faced a same issues a year back, went with complaints to Guruji Alok. Today, lots of ideas are there. But I am looking for collaborators. If interested let me know and we can see if there is something that we can do together. I cannot pay hefty, but I am presently working with some starters “Startups”. If you are interested then there could be something for you too. Drop your thoughts to vasu@harithamtechnologies.com
Shobhit Bakliwal
Thank you for your offer sir, but I am not looking for collaboration. I cannot relocate at the moment and already have a small team of 3 people with me.
Vasudevan Uppili
That is still better. You dont need to relocate. All we need to find is if we have a common platform to work together. let me know when you are ready at thoughts. Can you throw me more light on your team and expertise.
Shobhit Bakliwal
We work solely on Ruby on Rails and have offered services to clients for backend purposes and web development. That is all we offer. We are trying to diversify into products and are looking for ideas for which people would be willing to pay as we don’t want to rely on advertising.
asha chaudhry
shobhit – your post was shared on trhs fb page – you might want to respond….
Like · · Share · 11 · 25 minutes ago ·
Shobhit Bakliwal
Thanks a lot mam! 🙂
Mandar Joshi
Ideas are soul of Entrepreneurship !! In fact its always other way around that Entrepreneurs have many ideas however they don’t know how to handle them and therefore you have reached the right Jungle 🙂 Here you will get ideas in tonns !! From your confession it seems that you are somehow running out of ideas which could become successful in impressing your customers. I will offer two step help to you. In the first step I shall share two Ideas I have about a Mobile App development and in the second stage I shall try to give you some pointers so that you can think of your own ideas.
A couple of ideas I have for mobile App are as follows
Now a days most of us visit Hospitals for various reasons, for surgeries on our relatives, emergency procedures, health check ups etc. When you go to a big hospital it becomes very difficult to navigate your way to the specific section, identifying the specialist, hunt for the pathology labs, track the progress of the treatments and keep tabs on the expenses. There could be a huge opportunity of building an App for big hospitals where the app would provide all the information about the clinical and surgical facilities offered by the hospital with detailed tariff plans ( Now a days people do shop for planned medical procedures ) contact numbers and visiting hours of the specialists, facility to book an appointment with the specific specialist, ability to check the status of the pathology or other related investigation reports, monitoring the queue for the room booking, checking on the un billed amount incurred so far for the admitted patient, Applying for Mediclaim ( Even you can generate leads for Health Insurance Policies ) Checking the status of approval of claim made for treatment, even integration of online payment gateway to pay the bills, keeping track of prescriptions and treatment and follow up visits. This App can talk to the Hospital Management System to capture some valid data points and relay them back to the patient or their relatives. You can also think of building a web app for those who don’t use smartphones or tablets.
The second idea is to build an App for leave management. Every Govt/ Pvt employee needs to manage his/her leaves. What everyone is interested in is planning a vacation to include weekends with extended leaves. If you could create an App where people can plan their leaves in advance and if you could connect the same to travel portals or hotel booking portals you can generate lot of leads through this.
Now let me give you some insights on how can you build your own ideas.
Start observing the businesses around you. Keep your eyes and ears open. Try to understand their pain points. Whats causing the heartburns for their customers, What is it thats driving customers towards/ as well as away from the business. Meet and talk to business owners, their employees, front line people, their customers these interactions will give you loads of insights and hundreds of ideas on which you can build your App or Website business models.
If you wish to know more I would be glad to help !!! You can reach out for me at me@mandarjoshi.com
Shobhit Bakliwal
Thank you sir. Will certainly bug you for some more help!
Mandar Joshi
You are Welcome !!!
Narinder Singh Dahiya
Dear Shobit,
I am a security professional. We need a number of Mobile Apps in the field of security. Some of these could be:-
There are many more possibilities for Defence and Police forces. Can discuss these in detail and other ideas in the field if you find the subject exciting. Contact dahiyanarinder@yahoo.co.in
Ratnakar Gokarn
I am not a big fan of borrowing ideas. The simple reason is that while you can borrow an idea, unfortunately you simply cannot borrow the passion to build a great business around it.
If your intention is to build a startup, it is not going to happen by borrowing ideas from someone else.
It seems what you are looking for is just clients who can hire you to to build apps.
You want ideas, here are some ways you can get great ideas : (you can read the full article here in detail )
Repurpose
Take a service or approach applied to one market, and apply it to another.
Examples: Chill (Turntable.fm), Yammer (social networks for businesses)
Digitize
Take content or functionality that exists only in a legacy form and put it online or in an app.
Examples: Dr. Chrono (medical records), Google Books
Automate
Take a task that seems tedious and currently requires humans and automate it away.
Examples: Google (search rankings), EffectCheck (emotional impact analysis)
Unify
Create a common platform that ties together proprietary solutions or providers.
Examples: Twilio (abstracts away carrier-specific APIs), Greplin (single search engine for lots of services)
Componentize
Take a piece of functionality that people currently implement themselves and make it a reusable component.
Examples: Apigee (APIs), Get Satisfaction (support forums)
Connect
Transform a situation where people are isolated or lonely by connecting them in a novel way.
Examples: Facebook, Meetup, LetsLunch
Catalyze
Encourage people in a community to generate data that would otherwise be less structured or available.
Examples: StackOverflow (programming Q/A), reddit (social news), Curvio (IMDB for products and apparel)
Dont invent a new wheel, just innovate and improve. What is most likely to happen is that your initial idea will just be the starting point, there will be many iterations along the way.
Hope this helps.
Shobhit Bakliwal
Thanks a lot for the detailed answer sir.
Shobhit Bakliwal
Will contact you soon. Thanks
Sanchita Dutta
Hi
we wish to have a mobile version of our site developed. the site is built on opencart platform. the most critical requirements wud be
1. Superfast opening
2. search, contact us, categories are few things which should find priority in the ltd home page that is available
do let me know what you can do on this. the site is http://www.indiacod.com
mail us at indiacod@gmail.com or indrajit@indiacod.com with proposal to take it offline
regds
Shobhit Bakliwal
Sorry ma’am, I am not looking for freelance work. Thanks!
Sanchita Dutta
its ok, but perhaps misunderstood when u said
“I prefer to create websites but also have enough experience to create mobile apps.”
Shobhit Bakliwal
Yes, but I was looking for a general solution, which I can sell to people, and not custom solution which you need.
Jitendra Jogeshwar
Dear Shobhit,
I am software testing expert with experience in automation testing. As you might be aware that there are numerous open source tools available at the moment in the market. Whenever there a project to be delievered there is various kind of testing required like web service, performance, functional, ui. Now it become really cumbersome for someone to track status or overview for overall testing status and in turn application status as one has to collect information from various sources to get test status. I thought of creating a tool which would bring all the various kind of tests at one place this would help an automation tester to run the tests from single place rather going to each tool and then running tests. There can also be a defect management tool (i have also thought of a name TestRunner for this app) which provides additional benefit.
I am not sure if this is a great idea but if you want we can discuss in detail. Please let me know your views on the same
Regards,
Jitendra
Khushal Kapoor
Hi Shobhit,
I have an idea in my mind since a long time but dont have the the resources to execute it. Its simply a website for anything cool that you find around you. Its somewhat like a facebook without the friends barrier; so anyone and everyone can see the content. say you found out something really amazing but dont know where to share it, for example this site – ‘Therodinhoods.com’ i am sure everyone here believes its pretty amazing. Wouldnt this site be helpful to thousands maybe lakhs of entrepreneurs out there ? BUT the question is how does one promote it ? facebook limits you to your friends. wouldnt it be great to have a site where people can share, rate, recommend, other sites, activities, events, articles, interests, COMPANIES…..etc. One of my objectives is to promote the creative and unique products and services of all the new age Entrepreneurs who are toiling to find a customer base. Here is my article : https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/here-to-help-entrepreneurs-need-your-help-to-do-so please do read it and let me know if interested. Will discuss the idea in detail. khushalkapoor92@gmail.com
Abey John
+1 Ratnakar.
Shobit dive deeper into the ecosystem and study how things are being created. Firefox OS built on HTML5 is around the corner. My gut feel is it is going to demolish iOS and Android. Or at least make life extremely difficult for them. Why? HTML 5 is the bedrock on which the future internet rests. In Android and iOS there is an additional hardware abstraction layer plus Android has a license fee. Firefox OS is free. Because HTML 5 is directly talking to the hardware (or through lesser layers of rendering code) it is going to be faster, cheaper and require less expensive hardware. This will give all the big boys acidity and a run for their money :).
Aam admi apps are round the corner on form factors that will be same as today’s Rs. 2k-3k phones. Samsung is rolling out flexible screens later this year. Now how is that going to impact the ecosystem? Things are changing. If you are looking for app ideas take all these factors into account.
The next big wave I feel is going to be aam admi apps. Start getting in position to ride it.
Also, Firefox is giving a free phones to developers with app ideas.
Since you are small team I would suggest looking for simple problems to solve where you can quickly release the app into the market and test if it is gaining traction.
Try a 100 different small ideas. The “one big giant” idea that will make me my millions is mostly a myth. Don’t wait for it, pray for it, or do puja for it. It won’t come. Sometimes it will sneak up on you, sometimes it will come to you out of the blue. But don’t expect it or wait for it to come.
Out of the 100 ideas expect 95 to fail, and 5 to survive. If you get lucky one will be a hit. Learn from the failures and improve. This is a marathon.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Stop at one street corner and look around, you will see 10,000 ideas screaming out at you. YOU ONLY HAVE TO LOOK!
If you say you have run out of ideas you are either over stressed or being lazy. If over stressed I will make my favorite recommendation – yoga :). If lazy, please bend over and ask a passer by to kick you in the butt. Oh wait, no. Won’t help. For that also best remedy is yoga. :))
Ashwin C Parulkar
Whoa ! The Aby ‘Yoga’ John finally appears!:))) peace Aby
Abey John
Ashwin, mancha. Yoga is one way to solve every problem one the planet. Not the only way. But still… :))
Sheth Raxit
Why not ping us on raxit@m4mum.com, We have lots of idea but only 2 hands,1 brain and 24hrs to execute!
Currently we are changing the way how mumbai people commute, by sharing rick/taxi/car/bike instantly. We are using node,pythong,mongo and few more stuff.
Let’s catch at event or drop me a note.
Karan Ahuja
hi
not getting good ideas is a common problem like the writers block . so chill out and take it easy . you are surely not alone . most entrepreneurs i know try finding an idea daily – business development 🙂
try watching steve blanks course on udacity . the first thing an idea needs to do is solve a pain point .
try looking for pain points that would be fun , interesting to solve .
1 more suggestion i heard is to live in the future so that you see whats missing in the present .
meet the startup folks attend events , blog .
and choose your ideas .
the only thing an entrepreneur gets to shop for is ideas . (apart from this you are only allowed to sell : )
hope it helps . do stay in touch .
cheers
karan
Umakant Maurya
Why don’t u join any of your friends who has an idea with ready customers, I am sure during the time you will get your idea too.
Sridhar V
Hi Shobhit,
I understand your concern and interest in finding the idea that has good potential. I’m sure no one will answer your question on “What are the problems you face or solutions you want……………..”. There are two options which you could consider 1) Come up with an idea yourself (or) 2) partner with someone who has a good idea and has a plan on how to execute it.
Last year I attended a start up meet where there were two groups – Idea guys on one side and Techies on the other. In some cases ideas weren’t good or solving real problems, in few cases the technology/system aspects were not good, and in few cases the ideas and technology merged together. A few Idea guys didn’t get good Techies and some Techies couldn’t work on good ideas.
The other thing is that people may not openly share ideas because its their business/trade secret which they would reveal only when absolutely necessary.
Getting Ideas
I’m not an idea expert, but I can give you few suggestions. Think of any problem/issue that you can solve – it may be a new idea altogether, or you could be improvising on an existing product/service or platform or the way it is delivered. Let me share a few examples and you can think on those lines.
1) Red Bus – they saw a huge potential in bus bookings (online) which was fragmented and not widely available.
2) Naukri – a platform to connect candidates and recruiters (now it seems obvious but in mid-late 90’s it was a new idea)
3) Bill junction – bill payment platform
4) India Mart – online B2B marketplace
5) Bharat Matrimony – online matrimonial
If you closely observe, some of the ideas are not completely new or non-existent. They just looked at the Existing industry or set up and found a new way of delivering it online/using technology with enhanced features.
You just need to look around and observe people’s behavior, lifestyle trends, changes, etc. An e-commerce site may appear to be a sure-shot one, but its already so crowded and expanded that theres hardly anything left for new players.
Look at the trends around you in day to day life what people may look for – it could be renting/leasing out something, making complaints, buying specialized equipment, hiring a cab/cook, finding space for functions/parties, etc. These are just examples, so you need to pick the one which has good potential, and also interests you and fits within your capabilities.
Sony Joseph
Hey Shobit, can you please get in touch with me on sony@alchemistdigitalmedia.com
Nirav Shah
Hey Shobit,
My advice would be to stop looking for ideas – it is a mentally draining process. Instead, try to find problems that you have or other people have. Also, to sell SaaS in India is difficult. Lot of Indian SME’s still want customized solutions – that you can continue to offer via consulting. Try to sell your product idea to a global audience.
Check this out by Paul Graham: https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
This post by Paras from VWO is also good: https://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-startup-ideas-that-make-money.htm
Best Regards,
Nirav Shah
Arindam Mukherjee
Quoting Paul Graham here: “One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which we’ll seem backward to future generations.”
Arindam
http://www.flixstreet.in