A 25-year-old Indian man has revealed how he managed to earn 10 pounds in London in just 10 minutes — until the cops arrived to shut down his street-side business. Vishnu Vijayadharan, a Kerala native who works in London, shared a video of his creative side hustle on Instagram.
The business idea
Vijayadharan started with a simple business idea — selling polaroid pictures on the streets of London. “Let’s see how much money we can make by selling polaroid pictures in London,” he said in the clip.
Polaroid pictures are instant photographs that develop on their own within minutes after being taken. Instead of sending photos to be printed later, the camera ejects a physical picture immediately — making it the perfect product to sell in a popular tourist city like London.
Although they are named after the brand Polaroid, today, people also use “Polaroid pics” more generally to describe instant-film photos from other brands like Kodak or Fujifilm.
The initial investment.
Vijayadharan, who works a regular 9 to 5 job in the UK capital, started his side hustle with a small investment. The Kerala man bought a Kodak polaroid camera for 110 pounds ( ₹14,000 approximately) and went to a busy street with the idea of selling each picture for 5 pounds ( ₹640 approximately).
He did not spend much on signage either. His Instagram video shows that he held up a simple cardboard sign with the words “Cute £5 polaroids”.
{{/usCountry}}He did not spend much on signage either. His Instagram video shows that he held up a simple cardboard sign with the words “Cute £5 polaroids”.
{{/usCountry}}Within minutes, he had his first customer — a woman who appeared very pleased with her instant picture. “After two seconds, we got another customer,” Vijayadharan said.
A setback
At this point, he was thinking that he could make good money through this business — but then the cops arrived to pour cold water over his plans. “At that point I genuinely started thinking we were gonna make millions, but our next customer turned out to be the police,” he said.
Vijayadharan was informed that he needed council permission to sell stuff on the road. “Council officers came to charge us for illegal street selling,” he revealed.
“Apparently we were supposed to take permission from the council to do this and I had no idea about it,” he said. “But if you have permission from the council, you can easily make 100 pounds an hour here,” he added.
It wasn’t all bad for the Indian man, who did manage to earn 10 pounds ( ₹1,200 approximately), before he was caught.
His video is now going viral online with 2.6 lakh views and a ton of comments, with some calling him out.
“That is why visa rules are getting tougher because of you people … just don’t treat every country like India,” wrote one person. “Too many rules in UK,” another declared.
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)