After outlining the various factors to be kept in mind to work from home, here are some specific home business ideas:

Teaching

Teaching/ tuition at various levels. (School Subjects and Competitive exams); Also teaching of music; dance; acting; painting; yoga; aerobics; cooking; and so on.

You can even open play schools/ cr`E8ches/ day care centres for children.

Corporate services

Telemarketing (For a variety of goods and services, from credit cards to travel agencies and hotels).

Insurance / investment agency.

Data entry for companies.

Accounting for companies.

Writing Abstracts (universities and corporate research departments need people to help them with writing work, often with writing the synopses of academic papers).

Clipping services (Keeping track of industry news for company executives).

TV Programme Monitoring (Market Research and Advertising Agencies often pay people to watch advertisements and record them).

Consultancies

If you have the resources and manpower, and more importantly, the expertise/ technical knowledge, you can have your own consultancy offering a variety of services. Some of them are listed below:

Matrimonial Services

Event Management Services

Diet Consultancy or you could work as a Physical Fitness Instructor

Administering Therapies

Career Counselling/ Psychological Help Services; or you could work as a foreign education expert

Head Hunting Services

Model Coordinating Agency

Grooming Classes.

Options on computer/Net

Web Design and Development.

Content Development for Websites (From tackling news reports to writing original pieces.)

Net Research (Search engines and portals need part-timers to trawl the Web for links and information).

Creating Multimedia CDs for children.

Graphic Design (You can make use of your Computer and multimedia skills for this).

Desktop Publishing.

You can also start a Cyber caf`E9 at home, if you have computers and a little bit of space. And if you have a telephone and fax machine, you can open a PCO as well.

Writing/publishing

Freelance writing for newspapers and magazines.

Editing manuscripts for writers and publishers.

Proofreading for publishers.

Providing illustrations and pictures for books, magazines and periodicals.

Manual writing (If you have a technical background then you can do this for manufacturers of electronic goods and electrical gadgets).

Translating (If you know a third language, you can freelance as a translator for a publishing house).

Art entrepreneurship

Handicrafts (You can make cloth bags, cushion covers, napkins, bed linen, stationary, photo frames, decoration pieces, soft toys and other such knick-knack. You can open your own shop with these products, or organize an exhibition or even sell your creations to shops and stores).

Painting (These could be regular painting or glass and ceramic paintings. You can sell these to clients and retail outlets or you can organize art exhibitions or curate art shows too.)

Interior Decoration (You could do this on your own or freelance for architects or design studios).

Fashion Design (You could do this on your own, and open your own shop/boutique or provide your creations to showrooms and retail outlets.

Tailoring/ embroidery services.

Jewellery/ Accessory Design.

Food and catering

You can start a catering service or even make packed lunches for working people and get them delivered to homes or offices.

Preparation of cakes and bakery products; custom made chocolates; juices and squashes; wafers and masalas semi-cooked snacks; jams, jellies, pickles and even cut-to-size vegetables.

Beauty business

You can open your own beauty parlour or even offer your personalized services at the client’s home.

Travel services

You can start your own small travel agency/ consultancy.

Provide tourist taxis for hire

Organise special interest tours for Indian or international groups

Gardening and pet care

Potted Plants (You can provide plants to Corporate Offices from your own garden or a nursery on a rental basis. Or you can just open a plant nursery).

If you are an animal lover, you can open a pet farm and breed pets for sale.

In fact, in most business ventures that you start from home, you don’t really have to be very rich. Nor do you have to be equipped with an extraordinary business idea that can impress financial wizards! A business idea that meets an unsatisfied customer demand is one that is successful. You just have to be sure that you have a finger on the pulse of the potential customers.

The writer has authored The Penguin India Career Guide and The Essential Career Guide