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Noida man warns 9-to-5 employees after losing money in side hustle selling eggs, juice outside gym
A Noida man has warned 9-to-5 employees to think twice before pouring money into a side hustle, saying that it could turn out to be a loss-making exercise
A Noida man has warned 9-to-5 employees to think twice before pouring money into a side hustle, saying that it could turn out to be a loss-making exercise without proper market research. Vishwas Verma’s advice was rooted in personal experience — the Noida man revealed that he once started a shop selling eggs and juice outside a gym.
“Like many of us, I once believed small businesses are easy money...quick maths, instant profit. I believed it too… until I ran one myself,” he said in an Instagram post.
Noida man’s personal experience
Verma revealed that his brush with entrepreneurship began when he spotted a shop lying vacant near his gym. “The gym was in the basement, and so was the shop,” he said in his Instagram video, speaking in Hindi.
Verma said that the rent for the shop was just ₹10,000. He teamed up with a friend to open a small business selling health food, thinking it would do well with the gym-going crowd.
“We went into it without thinking,” he said. “We both thought that the ₹10,000 rent is low, and we have surplus income, so we started this business.”
A loss-making exercise
Unfortunately for Verma and his partner, their side hustle did not bring any money. “We sold juice, we sold protein shakes, we sold eggs,” he said.
“We hit our first roadblock, for example, while selling juice. So I started selling pineapple juice. But do you know the rate for a pineapple in the market? The price changes daily, so we couldn’t understand how much to price our juice at,” he said.
Verma said that his shop sold pineapple juice at ₹90 per glass. They soon realised they were selling the juice at cost price without making any profit. “We got a cold press machine too, thinking we would be able to extract a lot of juice. We barely got one glass from one whole pineapple,” he recalled.
Selling eggs no better
Next, the Noida man and his friend decided to try selling eggs. They assumed they would buy eggs at ₹5 per egg, boil them, and sell each at ₹10. A tidy profit? Not quite.
Verma said that first, they could not find eggs for ₹5. “Everywhere we tried, we found eggs being sold for ₹7 or 8. And then when we tried to sell them for ₹10 per egg, we always ended up ruining three to four eggs in the process of cooking,” he said.
“So there too, we ended up making a loss,” he added. (Also read: Gold rental is a new side hustle? Rich investors ‘rent’ out gold bars sitting in vaults)
Even selling a ₹11 Maggi for ₹30 did not turn a profit, since they did not take into account the salary they were paying to their shop manager, the rent etc.
“Finally we realised why the rent for the shop was so low — because no one aside from gym-goers was frequenting that area,” he said.
Verma ended his post by saying that people in 9-to-5 jobs often try to start a side hustle to bring extra income. “This reel isn’t meant to scare or discourage anyone. It’s my personal learning that every business demands understanding, research, and real-world exposure, not just surface-level calculations,” he said.
