ESAF Small Savings Bank's Dabba Savings Account - Inside the Dabba but innovative out-of-the-box thinking!!

Women are the backbone of the rural economy. Rural women manage everything, including the farms, working silently and without complaint. Once they are educated and empowered, the entire economy flourishes.

The population decrease in South India compared to North India is due to higher education among all sections, including women. When a woman is educated and empowered, she will have a smaller family, irrespective of her religious affiliation.

Indian villages lack basic banking facilities, and women, being natural money savers, found a solution close to their hearts and minds - the kitchen!!

Traditionally, women stored the surplus money in the rice container (sacred rice). They would bury it deep in the rice. Many stored cash in the Populla Dabba too. Women store their surplus Cash in a kitchen container or dabba! But the problem was that the other members of the family also knew about the dabba, and they would frequently take the money without consent.

ESAF Microfinance Bank hit upon a bright idea. It came out with an Inside the Dabba idea. Rather, very out-of-the-box thinking!! The scheme was the “Dabba Savings Account.”.

ESAF gifted a stainless-steel rice box to every woman.  

From the outside, the rice container looked like any other rice container.

The lady could store rice in the upper portion.

It had a secret compartment at the bottom. The secret compartment was for keeping excess cash.

Every week, the women go to a designated area in the village and deposit the saved money with ESAF bank officials. They got a passbook, which showed the deposited money. The money thus deposited earned interest.

EASF went a step further. It tied up all the shopkeepers and Kirana shops in those villages and supplied them with payment machines with embedded microchips. This helped the women make seamless purchases without paying cash.

They could pay at these shops with the money that they have in their ESAF bank account. The Aadhaar card was the interface, and the women could pay money through biometrics. All the transactions were visible through SMS on their smart or feature phones.

Brilliant campaign, ESAF! It identified a cultural nuance and came up with the concept of helping rural women. ESAF has expanded its own footprint. It also tied in with the local shops to make the process of using the deposited money as effective as possible.

ESAF understood that rural women save for their families and that the saved money would be used to buy household items. Thus, the entire rural economy would benefit from the catalyst, the ESAF Micro Finance Savings Bank.