Forget looking for a job. Think of an innovative idea and become an entrepreneur :
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The services sector is where new opportunities are beckoning job seekers in India. But even at the bottom of the barrel, there is a world beyond delivering pizzas or manning retail counters at malls. If you can think out of the box, you can probably find a more creative avenue for your talents.

The folks behind PhD (or Party Hard Drinkers, to give its full form) got their big idea from the crackdown against drunken driving in Mumbai. They reckoned that on New Year’s Eve there would be plenty of people willing to pay to be driven home after a spirited evening. The service costs Rs 500, 10 pm to 3 am. You provide the car.

That’s a venture that the folks who run discos and drinking joints may well tie up with. There are other service sorties more individually oriented. Wasiff Khan is the founder of the Mumbai-based Home Care Dog Food. He provides hot meals to pampered pooches all over the city. The menu is not exactly a la carte. But you can have the regular fare that costs Rs 30 per meal or the premium version which costs four times as much. Khan already has a clientele all over the city.

While on the subject of dogs, there is money to be made from taking them for walks. In Argentina, it’s big business (see box). In India, some of the dotcom companies were offering such services as part of the benefits. IT companies such as Wipro and Infosys offer concierge services which take over the headache of getting a passport, buying tickets for a movie, sending flowers to your significant other or shopping for groceries.

Another sortie in this arena is Transformations, a Delhi-based venture. It started off as a gag but has proved surprisingly successful. It offers beauty treatments and spas at home. Transformations will land up with all the equipment and give you the full treatment — effect a transformation. The cost depends on what you order. It ranges from Rs 600 to Rs 6,000.

Abroad, everything is corporatised. Take, for example, The Maids, a premier residential cleaning service in the US and Canada. It has spread to 40 US states and four Canadian provinces. It even offers gift certificates, which you can present to a friend who needs to be taken to the cleaners. “The Maids Home Services gift certificates can be used towards any of our services, such as maid service, carpet cleaning services, window cleaning services and more,” says the company. Maids in some Indian cities have started organising themselves. They have formed unions. Setting up a company is just a step away. Mumbai’s dabbawallas have done it.

Still abroad, look at Jim’s Group in Australia, with branches in New Zealand, Canada and the UK. Among its offerings are dog bathing, carpet cleaning, lawn mowing, painting, plumbing and bookkeeping.

All these services have existed in India for a long time. The difference today is that they are becoming organised and respectable. House painting, for one, was always handled by contractors and the unorganised sector. Today, companies like Asian Paints have integrated it into the business.

Or nursing. Fortis HealthWorld Ltd, Ranbaxy’s pharmacy chain, has just flagged off India’s first branded home nurse service. The company had a staffing arm, which placed nurses abroad. Now they will be given assignments at home too, in more senses than one.

Today’s India is becoming an entrepreneurs’ paradise. Forget that boring job. Walk dogs, breed ants (to supply to zoos), or simply drive drunks safely home. You could even get a tip at the end of the day.

Dog days in Argentina

Dog ownership isn’t just trendy in Argentina, it’s epidemic and on the city’s already overcrowded streets it often seems as though canines outnumber locals by an astounding ratio.

Of course, where one tourist sees adversity, another, more keen local eye sees possibility, and many Argentine entrepreneurs have been able to look beyond the poop-covered sidewalks. Welcome to the world of professional dog walking, undertaken by your friendly neighbourhood paseaperros (which means literally “strolls dogs”), who have rapidly become the biggest thing in Buenos Aires since dulce de leche.

While still a relatively new phenomenon, these young, invariably athletic locals are among the most common sights one now sees in the city’s downtown core; their recent rise to stardom is a testament not only to their ingenuity at capitalising on a niche market, but also to the willingness of the wealthy to shell out pesos in order to ride the latest trendy wave.

Typically, about 100 pesos a month provides your dog with two, two-hour walks each day, including pick up and drop off at your apartment. Paseaperros also brush and groom, as well as monitor for signs of ill health; for this reason, many of them even have veterinary training. Their duties are undertaken every weekday, but dog owners are left to fend for themselves on weekends.

(Source: Extracted from The Dog Days of Argentina, by Patrick Kennedy, CBC News)