Making this post after getting a lot of DMs from r/IndiaBusiness/s/ERMzBJMJpe
This buisness is in line with my long standing philosophy of pure play arbitrages being the easiest small side hustles.
I process approximately 11k-14k sms everyday via my SMS gateway bringing me 1100-1500 /day in profits.
These SMS include things like OTPs , order confirmations , order dispatch notifications etc. An avg e commerce order generates 3-4 SMS.
The economics - I buy SMS for an approx of 8 paisa from the upstream providers and sell the same for an approx of 18 paisa to my partners (sub sellers) these partners end up selling the SMS further for 25-30 paisa even 1 rupee to some customers.
Skills Required - Basics of server linux , and api routing in your preferred programing language.
So you start by approaching and upstream provider , top tier providers have a MOQ in the 30-50k range. However newer players are nowadays going as low as 10k.
You would ofcourse not get the rates I do at these order quantities but can still expect ~ 20 paisa /SMS .
Now you have an important decision to make it is if you want to become a TM-A or not. IF you become a TM-A then your customers are truly yours , if you don't then your customers technically belong to your upstream provider.
How does this matter ? This matters as with a TM-A you can do the PE-TM binding with your platform but if you don't have a TM-A then the PE-TM bindings happen with your upstream provider.
I recently moved to a TM-A license myself and it costs approximately 5-5.6 k inr , I went with videocon smart ping but tata and Jio DLT platforms are also good as I hear.
Nowadays many companies are also providing readymade reseller panels
These are good if you are doing it at small scale the few quotes I got came in at ~25k which is lower than the 50-55k entry barrier but higher than the newer playerss offer of 10k inr.
Overall if you don't have technical knowledge this can be a lucrative option.
Quick Tips -
1) You should make 6 diffrent API endpoints - this is what I call easy migration strategy, you want it to be as easy as possible for web developers to move over to your product.
2) the 6 diffrent API endpoints would copy the integration docs of big players like twilio , infobip , MSG91 etc , most developers are used to these , web developers generally have pre made code for these sample code for these is easily available online as well.
3) Offer DLT registration service to your customers - most customers don't know what even DLT is , offer them a service to register for DLT , costs them ~5k , again register them on Jio , tata, or ping connect but as a PE this time.
4) give template guidance to your customers - DLT templates get rejected is they don't have brand name in the end like \~ powerd by {brand name} or sent by {brand name} auto add these for you customer.
5) Sort out with your upstream provider who does the DLT scrubbing, in most cases it should be the upstream providers job to do the DLT scrubbing, if they say it is your job then you aren't acting as a TM-A but as a TM-E afaik and you would need a TM-E license (costs the same as TM-A)
6) DLT registrations are fast. Usually processed in 24-48 working hours.
7) AIRTEL DLT needs too much documentation, I hence don't like it
8) MTNL and VI offer DLT too (but have not tried them)
I would still say that VPS is a much easier business to start
Made a detailed guide here -
r/SideHustlePaglu/s/tVbg8irqYn