It’s becoming a known fact that Canada is one of the best countries for immigrants to settle down and thrive. With the Canadian government supporting small business owners amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a no-brainer to settle in Canada.
Canada has plenty of business opportunities for those with great talent and entrepreneurial skills. If that’s you, then this blog will help you out with the prerequisites and business ideas for starting a business in Canada.
What You Should Know Before Starting a Canadian Business as an Immigrant
While there are a few attractive opportunities for immigrants to start their own businesses in Canada, you need to be clear on the requirements.
First, you’ll need a physical address for your business (online businesses are an exception), apply for business permits and a business number, just like any other Canadian citizen. As an immigrant, you have three main programs for starting your own business:
★ Self-Employed Program
If you want to enter Canada as an immigrant and start a self-employed business , you need to have a certain amount of money based on the number of people in your family. You’ll also be subjected to medical tests to accept your application.
★ Start-Up Visa Program
Immigrants with innovative ideas who can create more job opportunities for Canadian residents are welcome in the country. You will need to furnish the details of the funding and investment plan of your business and have the initial startup costs with you.
★ Provincial Nominee Program
This is the best program to enter when you don’t have the funding for your business or a concrete idea. Usually, immigrants who can’t enter Canada with the before two programs can do so with this one. You’ll be applying to become a permanent resident of Canada based on the individual programs in the state you prefer to enter. After medical tests, you’ll be approved to enter if you have fulfilled that state’s requirements for immigrants.
Now that you have an idea of these options to enter Canada and set up a business let’s look at some of the best business ideas to get you started.
10 Business Ideas for Immigrants in Canada
Canada is ranked in the 23rd position in terms of ease of doing business by the World Bank. You can start almost any type of business in Canada and successfully grow it into a huge company. It all depends on your skills, budget and convenience. We have some of the best business ideas for immigrants to start in Canada listed here.
1. Hospitality & Accommodation
Think homestays, hotels, motels, resorts, farm stays, guest houses and bed & breakfast stay.
You can either start your own place of accommodation by buying and running the place or start a business that provides hospitality services. For example, you can build a business that hires wait staff or a recruiting firm dedicated to helping the hospitality industry hire the right employees. Or, you start your business by building an app that matches customers with their choice of accommodations in Canada.
There are several possibilities to explore in the hospitality field and based on your experience, skills and budget, you can decide the best one.
2. Restaurant
This is one of the go-to ideas for immigrants to start a business in Canada. You necessarily don’t need to focus on Canadian food and instead, you can bring your local food choices here!
Based on your location, you can start a restaurant preparing authentic food from your home country. And this restaurant doesn’t even need to be a fancy one — you can create a food truck, a small takeaway place or a cloud kitchen and then build your business as it gains more momentum.
Canadians are open to trying new food all the time and when you can bring authentic flavours in the way they like, you can hit your business off the ground soon.
3. Grocery Store
Grocery stores are one of the most profitable businesses in Canada. You need to work hard initially to establish your regular customers, but it’ll turn into a regular income once you have them going.
Since you can find a lot of immigrants in Canada, there is always space to create grocery stores catering to a specific group of people. For example, your grocery store can stock Asian food items that they wouldn’t otherwise find in any other grocery store. You can pick any such themed grocery stores that will make you stand out from the rest. When you’re going for such a specific group of customers, make sure to start your grocery store in the locality where these customers are the majority.
4. Agriculture
Agriculture is one of the most lucrative businesses in Canada and if you have hands-on experience in farming and agriculture, you can start your own business here.
You can buy or lease a piece of land to grow specific crops in Canada to start your business. Or, you can also set up a company that provides auxiliary services for agriculture like providing trucks, farmworkers, etc.
It all depends on your experience in this field and how much knowledge you have about agriculture in Canada.
5. Construction
With new businesses coming up in Canada, there is a need for construction and contracting companies. If you’re an immigrant moving to Canada and have a good network of workers in the country, you can start your own construction company.
Alternatively, there are also several other construction-based businesses you can start. If you’re an architect, you can begin an architecture design company. You can pool in a group of handymen to do a specific set of construction tasks. Or be a facilitator who connects the big construction companies with their required workforce.
6. Technology
Technology is quite extensive and starting a business on the tech side is one of the best ideas. You can settle in one of the tech hubs of Canada and found your startup in the locality amidst the other tech firms.
There are so many options to explore when it comes to tech-based businesses. From creating products, providing support services to starting a tech research company, the choices are abundant. There are also so many categories inside technology that you can explore to start a business. There’s software programming, gaming, app development and tech according to individual domains. You can pick a niche and build your tech company from scratch.
7. Tutoring
This is one of the business ideas that need little to no investment. All you need is a strong business plan to target your customers and a special skill you’re experienced in and you can get this business started.
It can be anything related to your education, music, dance, fitness or any other skills or hobby that you’re an expert in. You can either conduct the classes through video calls or rent a studio and tutor in person. If you’re tutoring in any educational subjects and prefer one-on-one tutoring, you can visit the student’s home.
8. Cleaning
If you have sharp observational skills and are a stickler for perfection, then there’s no other best for you!
Starting a cleaning business in Canada as an immigrant doesn’t take too much work. You need to establish your company, hire a few employees and get the cleaning materials ready. You can offer various types of cleaning services for the people in your locality. And the best part about these services is that you can quickly get word-of-mouth to do the trick to gain more customers.
9. Day Care
Many busy parents are looking for reliable daycare centers to leave their children at. When you’re starting a daycare business, you need to make sure that everything looks great and above board. Parents are very critical of where they leave their children and you should have the patience and the ability to care for the children to start this business.
Starting a daycare business for children isn’t the only option. You can start a pet care business where pet owners can leave their pets with you when they’re travelling or take the pets for walking. If you’re a pet lover, this is a great choice.
10. Salon
If there’s one business idea that can never go out of fashion, then it is this! Hairstyling salons, facial salons and spas are lucrative business opportunities. If you already have experience working in a salon, you can start your own small salon in Canada.
You’ll need some basic investment to lease out the place, buy the appliances and the products required for the salon. But if you’re a skilled stylist, then you can easily grow your business fast in the country.
Wrapping Up
Canada has a highly developed economy along with an easy process of immigration. This makes Canada the perfect place for immigrants to move and start a new business. If you’re planning to move to Canada for this purpose, make sure that you fulfill all the business and monetary requirements. You can brainstorm from the above list of business ideas in Canada for immigrants to get your business off the ground.