Top business ideas 2011 - best Russian startups

It becomes a good tradition to celebrate the end of the year by making a summary and posting the top of best business ideas that started and boomed for the past 12 months. Lets keep it up this year as well! Top 10 best Russian web startups who raised millions in funds and earned millions for their owners is under cut. 1. Oktogo.ru Startup that collected the largest online database of Russian hotels and combined it with hotel reviews from one of the leading travel sites – TripAdvisor.com. This project gained huge popularity, becoming nr. 1 on Russian online travel market and raising $5 millions in venture capital from European investors. 2. ZeptoLab.com Gaming site that reached 60 million game downloads without any investments. ZeptoLab also makes money on branching their games into comic books and toys. 3. Biglion.ru This coupon service is an extremely successful project that skyrocketed from 0 to a monthly income of $15 millions in less then two years. Biglion was funded by Tiger Global and Ru-Net. 4. Metabar.ru A service similar to Conduit that offers browser toolbar creation. For faster growth project raised $1 million in funds. 5. Nginx.ru A web server, reverse proxy and e-mail proxy software provider that showed phenomenal growth of traffic and profits, becoming Nr. 2 on the Web. Project raised $3 million from global venture capital investors. One of the main challengers for title of Best Business 2011. 6. Lamoda.ru Online shoe store Lamoda.ru is the first project launched in Russia by Samwer brothers' Rocket Internet with funding from various companies. Showed significant growth in 2011 and proved to be a truly promising internet startup 2011. 7. Surfingbird.ru Surfingbird.ru – an internet startup that delivers a web recommendation and discovery service to end-users. Lets see if this project, backed up by $3 million funding will kick Stumbleupon's ass. 8. GridGain.com A co-project of Russian and American entrepreneurs - cloud computing software vendor. 9. BabyBoom.ru Kids' goods online retailer BabyBoom.ru competes on an overcrowded children goods market. This project is backed up by Index Ventures'. 10. KupiVIP.ru Online commerce is booming in Russia. This online shopping club was in top businesses 2010 and made headlines in April 2011 when it closed $55 million round from Bessemer, Balderton and Russia Partners, the largest internet startup funding in Russia.

Source - Business Ideas

Interesting business niche - personalized drinks

During this year we were watching how business is turning its face to the customer, learn to be flexible and follow the changing demands of clients. These demands are very different, but there's one thing that unite them all – customers look for personalized service and personalized products. This applies to all business markets, especially to food business market. UFlavor is an Indianapolis based company that follows one of the hottest consumer trends 2011 – use-generated content. But this company brings it to a completely new level. UFlavor in cooperation with with flavor company Flavors of North America (FONA) launched an online beverage marketplace where users can create a personalized drink, mixing up 42 ingredients, choosing color, name and even label. Drink will be produced and shipped directly to user's home address. UFlavor is currently available only in BETA version, but company already revealed their ambitious plans for 2012 – vending machines. Customers will be able to select flavor combination or a combination created by someone else and the drink will be mixed and bottled on the spot. Following latest consumer trends along with choosing an interesting business niche is an easy and quick way to business success!

Source - Business Ideas

Winter business idea - mountain rentals

I'm a passionate skier, but, unfortunately, there are no decent mountains in my country. So, when winter comes I start searching the web for interesting skiing offers abroad to book myself at least one skiing holiday. This time I have stumbled upon an offer that has caused a lot of discussions and attracted attention of mass media. Liftopia, the US based discount ski ticket site, has launched a unique winter business – entire mountain rentals. Liftopia in cooperation with Plattekill Mountain in Roxbury, New York; Mt Abram in Greenwood, Maine; Camden Snow Bowl in Camden, Maine; and Whaleback in Enfield, New Hampshire offers to rent an entire mountain (or just a part of even and even a dedicated tubing hill) exclusively for yourself. You can use all slopes to enjoy skiing or snowboarding and to hone your technique without anyone getting in the way. This pleasure is not cheap and the rental price varies from $900 for one slope up to $3000 for entire mountain and more. I'm a bit surprised that European companies do not have any similar offers so far. There are so many skiing resorts and so many skiing fans who can easily afford a pleasure of renting a mountain. Due to the lack of foresight these companies lose potential profits that this winter business idea would surely bring. To keep being on top entrepreneurs should always be open to new business ideas! Flexibility in business always pay off.

Source - Business Ideas