Every entrepreneurial journey begins with a great idea. Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to bring the world together resulted in the germination of Facebook. Elon Musk launched Tesla, one of the most successful car brands of 2022, to accelerate mankind’s transition to sustainable energy. Great ideas make great and successful businesses. Such businesses not only work in the present but also pave a path for future generations.
However, in 2022, when every great idea has already been swooped away by entrepreneurs, it may feel challenging to come up with a unique concept for a new business venture. In fact, many entrepreneurs struggle to step into the real market simply because they don’t have a robust business idea.
If you’ve been struggling to come up with a unique idea to embark on your entrepreneurial journey, we are here to help! In today’s guide, we’ll explore 10 of the most unique business ideas that’ll not only help you start your new venture, but also provide mankind with effective solutions to tackle some of the most common issues in their daily life.
Why Do You Need a Unique Idea to Start a Small Business/Startup in 2022?
Before diving into the list of different startup ideas, let’s first understand why it’s crucial to have a solid idea for a new business venture. The truth is we have completely shifted to a tech-driven world. Today, every aspect of our life is influenced by technology at some level.
Something as simple as buying groceries can be made more convenient with the help of dedicated grocery delivery platforms. It means technology has become the driving force for the entire world.
And, this increased reliance on technology has also increased competition in every industry. Thanks to easy Internet access, consumers have become smarter and quite picky while signing up with a new brand. To break the initial barrier and surpass the existing competition, your business idea needs to be rock solid. The general thumb rule says that if you start a new business, your goal must be to resolve a common problem faced by a wide majority of people.
This simple approach is how many businesses including the likes of Facebook and Tesla managed to become multi-billion dollar companies. So, if you also want to expand your startup into a successful business venture, articulating your business idea will be extremely important.
10 Best Start Ideas to Build Successful Businesses in 2022
Now, the best way to come up with a distinctive business idea is to find what you’re passionate about. If you aren’t driven by your business idea, you won’t be able to turn it into a successful brand.
Again, if Musk didn’t believe in the idea of driving cars using electricity, Tesla wouldn’t have managed to generate a revenue of 53.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. So, while going through the following list, your objective should be to find an idea that drives you and implement your expertise to turn it into a remarkable business.
1. Start a Cloud Kitchen
Cloud Kitchens have become one of the most lucrative and economically profitable business ideas in 2022. Due to the global pandemic, many restaurants had to completely shut down their businesses as it was challenging to afford the maintenance of large spaces. That’s when some of these food businesses transitioned their business models into comparatively more affordable and easy-to-operate cloud kitchen setups.
For readers who don’t know, cloud kitchens are kitchen spaces that only provide delivery-only meals. There isn’t a dining area where people can sit and enjoy the meals. Instead, the idea is to partner with food delivery aggregators or launch a custom food delivery platform so that customers can order food from the comfort of their homes.
The reason why cloud kitchens are such a profitable business model is the increased customer reliance on doorstep food delivery. Due to an ongoing battle with a global pandemic, many people still don’t want to flock into crowded restaurants. This is the reason why the cloud kitchen market size is projected to surpass 71.4 Billion US Dollars by the end of 2027.
- Dropshipping Platform
Like cloud kitchens, Dropshipping Platforms are also a profitable and affordable business model that you can launch at an extremely minimal cost. Dropshipping is basically a type of ecommerce business model where you don’t have to deal with any inventory management whatsoever.
All you need to do is launch your online store, partner with suppliers who’ll handle the entire packaging/shipment of products, and start accepting orders from the customers. No upfront inventory cost at all!
The biggest advantage of choosing dropshipping ecommerce models over conventional ecommerce stores is the lower risk of failure. Since you don’t have to stock up products in a physical warehouse, the initial operating cost to launch the dropshipping platform will be pretty low. This way even if you don’t accept any orders for a few weeks, you still won’t have to worry about inventory damage.
- Launch a Clothing Store
If you are a fashion designer who loves crafting new clothing designs, it would be great to showcase your skills to the world and sell your designs to earn huge revenues. A fashion and clothing store is one of the evergreen business models that’ll always turn profitable in the long run, given that your clothing designs are appealing and can captivate the customers.
Now, starting a clothing store is a fairly easy process. Many ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce have ready-to-launch ecommerce templates that you can choose for your online shop. Such platforms also have easy-to-use interfaces, which means managing product inventory is hassle-free too.
However, if you still don’t want to deal with the technical aspects of running an ecommerce store, you can also hire a dedicated ecommerce development firm to launch a custom clothing store. In either case, sharing your clothing designs with the world will open up a new revenue stream for your brand.
- Pharmacy Delivery Platform
Medicine Delivery platforms have become quite popular in the post-pandemic world. Today, many people prefer getting their medicines delivered to the doorstep instead of walking to a pharmacy store. With a dedicated pharmacy delivery platform, customers would have the liberty to order medicines within a few clicks.
Now, when it comes to a pharmacy delivery portal, you would have to consider multi-platform existence. The best way to do this is to launch a pharmacy delivery website along with cross-platform on-demand medicine delivery applications for both Android and iOS. A multi-platform existence will allow customers to order medicines from anywhere they want.
- Start an Ed-Tech Platform
The COVID pandemic has also transformed the conventional education model and forced institutions and universities to adapt to the more flexible e-learning model.
As a result, the demand for feature-packed e-learning platforms has drastically increased in the past two years. Both students and teachers find it more convenient to attend lectures remotely. This is the reason why 42% of educational institutions are planning to continue with their e-learning models, even when the pandemic ends.
If you are looking for a startup idea with minimum investment and huge returns, starting an ed-tech platform like Byju’s or UnAcademy would be a suitable choice. Such platforms will give learners easy access to high-quality informative content and they’d be able to learn new concepts without attending any physical classes whatsoever.
- Online Vegan Supermarket
Veganism is no longer considered a taboo topic that was only discussed in CNN debates. Many people, including health experts, have understood the potential benefits of following a vegan diet and that’s why the vegan culture is growing rapidly.
However, the biggest challenge for a vegan is to find fresh food. With supermarket shelves stacked with animal products, many vegans don’t trust the credibility of such places to buy their groceries.
This is when a dedicated online vegan supermarket comes into the picture. It’s a one-of-a-kind startup idea where you can launch a dedicated online marketplace that only sells vegan products. To do this, you can either partner with a local supplier or set up your own warehouses to process the customer orders. The goal would be to provide customers with fresh and 100% vegan grocery products.
- Launch a Lending Library to Rent Your Book Collections
Another startup idea that can help you establish a small business without any upfront cost is launching an online library to lend books to other avid readers. If you love reading books and have a huge collection of novels, you can lend those to other readers and make money in a hassle-free manner.
Again, you can use one of the ready-to-use themes from ecommerce platforms like Shopify or Magento to set up your online library lending shop. You can upload the book collections and start accepting requests from nearby readers. And, once your business starts to pick up the pace, you can even sell books with a ‘used’ mark at cheaper prices.
- Start a Podcast
A decade ago, no one would have thought that starting a podcast could generate millions of dollars in revenue. But, after the immense success of podcasts like “Joe Rogan Experience”, “Impaulsive”, and the “Rich Roll Podcast”, it has become one of the most sought-after business ventures in 2022.
Starting a podcast is fairly simple. All you need is a basic recording setup and ideas that you can talk about for several hours. To make things more interesting, you can also invite guests to your podcasts and give them a platform to share their knowledge with the world.
The best part is you don’t need any publishing house to release your podcasts. With platforms like Spotify and YouTube, releasing podcasts has become completely hassle-free and anyone can do it, even with zero subscribers.
- Start a Virtual Event Planning Company
Virtual events have become the new norm as many countries are still functioning under a partial lockdown. However, organizing a virtual event is far more challenging than a conventional physical event. That’s why many business owners turn to event planning companies that could help them organize virtual events and avoid unexpected blunders.
If you are into event management, starting a virtual event planning company would allow you to expand your business boundaries and generate higher revenue. The best part is you won’t even need a website to do the job. With a simple Instagram account, you can showcase your services to the world and start accepting orders on social media itself.
- Launch an NFT Marketplace
NFT marketplaces are the newest business ventures that have transformed the entire market. With NFT marketplaces, you can either sell your own digital art or let other artists tokenize their digital assets and sell them to potential buyers.
Launching an NFT marketplace in 2022 will give you an early entry into this emerging landscape and you’ll be able to establish yourself as an industry leader in the market. Now, unlike other startup ideas we have discussed so far, launching an NFT marketplace is a bit tricky as it requires Blockchain integration. So, it would be crucial to hire expert NFT marketplace developers to launch your custom NFT platform.
The Bottom Line
Starting a new business is time-consuming and challenging, but equally rewarding. The goal is to find a business idea that you feel passionate about. Of course, the above-mentioned ideas are only a few of the startup ideas that you can embark on to launch a successful business in 2022. There are hundreds of other ideas that are still unexplored and whose implementation could do great for the entire world.