Do you have a business idea, but your investment doesn’t allow it? Well, your investment might be a fixed quantity, but your ideas aren’t. You can think of as many ideas as you want. And no matter how much your brain tells you that you can’t start a business with the little money you have, you can.
All you need is to find a small manufacturing business idea and get moving in a specific direction. It’s essential to be dynamic in your approach but focused on your goal. Before delving into the research and operations part, you need a base to start.
Table of Contents
Small Manufacturing Business In India
In the list below, we give you just that! Check out these 10 business ideas with low investment and high profits.
- Pickles
- Incense Sticks
- Peanut Oil
- Buttons
- Handmade Candles
- Ice-Cream Cones
- Cotton Buds
- Noodles
- Stapler Pins
- Paper Bags
1. Pickles
| Investment | ₹ 20,000 to ₹ 30,000 |
| ROI | 5 to 7 months |
| Profit | ₹ 50,000 to ₹ 60,000 |
Selling pickles is by no means a small business idea, especially in a country like India. Over the years, homemakers have indulged in this business, making massive profits.
It’s a low investment business that can help you reap rich dividends just because of the sheer demand of India’s pickles. And you don’t even need to research for a particular recipe. A traditional one can do wonders for you.
How to start?
- Your first step would be to find a good recipe or use your traditional one and cook the right amount of pickles.
- You can then go and try selling these to local dealers by packing them in cheap poly bags.
- You can also send these in jars to local stores and go on to brand them in containers later on.
2. Incense Sticks
| Investment | ₹ 70,000 to ₹ 90,000 |
| ROI | 8 to 10 months |
| Profit | ₹ 30,000 to ₹ 40,000 |
You aren’t part of an Indian household if you haven’t smelt the fragrance of incense sticks. Whether it’s for the early morning prayers or to shoo away mosquitoes, incense sticks are used in various ways.
Sales increase exponentially during festive seasons throughout the country, making it one of the most profitable manufacturing businesses to start in India. Agarbattis aren’t just popular in India anymore, though. There’s also a prospect of exporting incense sticks worldwide because of their use during meditation and yoga.
How to start?
- You’d need to buy some inexpensive bamboo sticks and essential oils along with fragrances of your choice.
- Sandalwood, rose, and jasmine are some of the popular fragrances.
- Install an agarbatti machine for bulk production, which can cost around Rs.50,000.
- At the start, you can manually coat the stick with oils and dry them.
3. Peanut Oil
| Investment | ₹ 2,00,000 to ₹ 4,00,000 |
| ROI | 1 to 1.5 years |
| Profit | ₹ 70,000 to ₹ 100,000 |
Peanut or groundnut oils are a standard edible oil used in cooking in our households. You can find refined as well as unrefined variants of it in the market. It helps lower cholesterol levels and improves heart health. This makes it popular.
You can start small by establishing a manufacturing unit. Keep in mind that even the simplest oil manufacturing units require substantial investment. India produces about 3,00,000-3,50,000 tons of groundnut and peanut oil every year and even exports around 10,000, so despite the investment, the business has expansion potential.
How to start?
- Start with researching around for cheap peanuts.
- Put a small plant for extraction and refinery purposes.
- Take care of packaging and branding either manually or by automation.
- Make arrangements for marketing and sales.
4. Buttons
| Investment | ₹ 30,000 to ₹ 40,000 |
| ROI | 4 to 5 months |
| Profit | ₹ 15,000 to ₹ 20,000 |
Buttons are indispensable to the garments industry. From ladies to kids’ garments, from jackets to jeans and more, buttons come into use all through the industry. You can choose to go for a plastic button factory or a steel one.
You can set up multiple varieties as you go on. It can be started at home as well with as few as two employees at work. Apart from selling buttons to factories, you can also open up a small shop for mending needs.
How to start?
- Start this small manufacturing business from home with a small and inexpensive machine.
- You can go for a trade-up to save costs upfront and start within INR 50,000.
- You won’t need hefty marketing to sell buttons. Start with local vendors and build your way up.
5. Handmade Candles
| Investment | ₹ 20,000 to ₹ 30,000 |
| ROI | 2 to 3 months |
| Profit | ₹ 20,000 to ₹ 50,000 |
India is a country of festivals, and candles brighten up most of them. Starting a candle-making business is never bad, mainly if they are sold as expensive handmade candles at fairs and art galleries.
Handmade candles also make for aesthetic decor items across the world. Scented and therapeutic candles are in popular demand at spas, hotels, and restaurants.
How to start it?
- Buy cheap raw materials like thread, wax, wick, molds, fragrance oil, and containers.
- Apart from that, you’d need some regular candle-making material like an oven, melting pot, weighing scale, and thermometer.
- Market your candles locally at first. Later, look into exports.
6. Ice-Cream Cones
| Investment | ₹ 1,00,000 to ₹ 1,50,000 |
| ROI | 1 to 2 years |
| Profit | ₹ 50,000 to ₹ 60,000 |
Starting a business that has popular demand and yet fewer competitors is always beneficial. Producing ice-cream cones is one such idea with popular demand throughout the country. Every ice-cream hawker and stall keeps some ice cream cones.
You can also send your cones to factories looking to outsource. It does require a significant investment but can be started in a tiny space at your home or a local shop.
How to start?
- Set up cone manufacturing equipment.
- Employ a team of people to help put in the raw materials and package the products.
- Talk to hawkers, stall owners, ice-cream parlor owners, and factories to sell your cones.
7. Cotton Buds
| Investment | ₹ 20,000 to ₹ 40,000 |
| ROI | 6 to 8 months |
| Profit | ₹ 30,000 to ₹ 40,000 |
The rise in awareness of maintaining personal hygiene has been synonymous with the demand for sanitizers, soaps, and even cotton buds. Some spindle and cotton is all you need to manufacture this, apart from packaging.
Automatic bud-making machines are available too. If you spend a bit more, you can get an automated packing device. This saves you the cost of packaging from other sources or having another person do that.
How to start?
- Choose from a variety of small manufacturing machines in India based on your output and investment. If you cannot invest in a machine, make your buds manually.
- Package your buds and market them in small fairs, at local general stores, and supermarkets.
- You can also market them door-to-door for better sales.
8. Noodles
| Investment | ₹ 1,00,000 to ₹ 2,50,000 |
| ROI | 8 to 10 months |
| Profit | ₹ 60,000 to ₹ 70,000 |
Another low-investment business, a noodle-making company can provide you with a high ROI in little time. Noodles are in popular demand across the country, both in packaged forms as instant noodles or those used by restaurants to make chowmein.
The manufacturing process is pretty simple. Use automatic and semiautomatic noodle-making machines. If you are selling noodles to Chinese restaurants, you might not even need a label or branding.
How to start?
- Noodle-making requires some inexpensive raw material like wheat flour, salt, sugar, starch, vegetable oil, sodium bicarbonate, and vegetable oils.
- The machine cuts noodles to the desired thickness.
- Take care of drying and packaging the noodles.
- Look for innovative ways to market your noodles. Go to supermarkets, local general stores, and Chinese and other continental restaurants for selling them.
9. Stapler Pins
| Investment | ₹ 3,00,000 to ₹ 3,50,000 |
| ROI | 1 to 1.5 years |
| Profit | ₹ 80,000 to ₹ 1,20,000 |
Stapler pins might seem like a little accessory you’d use once in a while, but they have extensive use in offices, schools, and colleges. Stapler pins should be of acceptable quality to preserve documents for years.
These are made from galvanized iron wires. Paying particular attention to the iron’s quality to create stapler pins can get your business up and running quickly. You’d need to register your business and try branding it to fight off the competition with established brands. Your small idea may soon turn into a large-scale manufacturing business idea in India.
How to start?
- Automatic stapler pin-making machines are now available in the market, making the process pretty simple.
- You can set the lengths of the pins in the machine.
- It quickly flattens the iron wire and cuts them quickly.
- Focus on good packaging to lure customers, and you can sell it well around offices and colleges.
10. Paper Bags
| Investment | ₹ 3,00,000 to ₹ 4,50,000 |
| ROI | 10 to 12 months |
| Profit | ₹ 150,000 to ₹ 180,000 |
Another popular product you may not have thought of producing is the paper bag. Its demand has grown exponentially in recent times. As people have become eco-friendlier and more aware of how plastic waste is indispensable and harmful, this business has taken off.
Now, most of the top-notch clothing brands are providing paper bags to show themselves as responsible companies. Similarly, shopkeepers in local markets also offer paper bags, even if it is at an additional cost. From jewellery to cosmetics and more, a paper bag is used in packaging it all.
How to start?
- You can start small, but it does require some significant investment to get automatic papermaking machines.
- A machine that costs around 5 lakh has exceptional production levels of thousands of units per hour.
- You can also go for semiautomatic machines at half the price.
Parting words
Now, you’d have understood that you don’t need too much to start a business. If you look around with your eyes open, many opportunities linger with minimal investment and competition. Just research well and begin somewhere, and you never know when your small business develops into a bigshot brand!
