A lot of salaried people are quietly drowning in a personal loan, two credit cards and an app loan. They don't need another loan. They need someone to sit with them and make a plan they can actually keep.
That someone could be your business, and their employer could be the one paying.
I'll walk you through one idea from the directory, Debtease, and show how a debt counselling business works when HR is the buyer.
The problem
Loans are the biggest thing Indians complain to their banks about. Loans and advances made up 29.25% of complaints at the RBI Ombudsman's offices in 2024-25, and credit card complaints went up 20.04% in a year (source: RBI, 2025).
Settling a loan isn't the easy way out either. Under RBI's 2023 framework, a lender that accepts less to close a loan can't give that borrower fresh credit for at least 12 months (source: RBI, 2023). So if you're juggling several EMIs on a salary, a repayment plan you can stick to usually beats a settlement that locks you out of credit.
Most people don't know that, which is exactly the gap.
How the business works
Debtease is a confidential counselling desk that employers buy as a staff benefit. An employee books a private session. A counsellor lists every loan, card and app debt, builds a budget from the payslip and drafts a plan - which loans to restructure, which penal charges to contest and what monthly amount is realistic.
Then Debtease writes to each lender with the plan and income proof. Since January 2024, penal charges can't be capitalised or folded into the interest rate (source: RBI, 2023), which gives a counsellor solid ground to dispute some balances. The employer sees usage numbers, never names.
Why not just get borrowers together and bargain as a group? It sounds clever, and it doesn't work. Lenders settle each account under their own board-approved policy (source: RBI, 2023), so a borrower group has nothing to push with. An employer contract brings volume without asking anyone to default together.
Who pays
The employee uses it free and the employer pays. The working assumption on the page is ₹30–80 per employee per month, or a fixed annual fee for a set number of cases. Your buyers are HR heads at firms with big salaried workforces, think factories, retail chains and BPOs.
This is the part I'd test hardest. HR teams don't usually see staff debt as their problem, so your pitch has to connect it to things they already track, like salary advance requests and absence.
What it costs to start
The kit puts launch capital at ₹40–75 L for about 12 months, taking you to 8–12 employer contracts and roughly 1,500 counselled employees. These are research estimates, so treat them as a starting range -
| Item | Range (₹ L) |
|---|---|
| Four debt counsellors for 12 months | 18–30 |
| Lender liaison lead | 6–10 |
| Case software and confidential booking | 4–8 |
| Legal and data protection | 3–6 |
| Employer sales | 5–12 |
| Contingency | 4–9 |
Notice where the money goes. It is mostly people. The software is basic, and the hard bit is hiring counsellors who can calm a frightened borrower and still stand up to a stubborn collections team.
Licences and rules
You don't need a lending licence while you only counsel and negotiate. The line moves the moment money or loans get involved. This is not legal advice, so check the details with a lawyer before you launch -
- Never handle money. Don't collect EMIs or pool payments. Employees pay lenders directly.
- RBI digital lending rules apply if you ever arrange consolidation loans, because you'd then act for a regulated lender.
- Company or LLP registration with the MCA, plus GST once you cross the threshold.
- DPDP Act compliance from day one. Take explicit consent before you contact any lender, and never share names with the employer.
If you're building this outside India then the same categories usually have a local version, so check with your own regulator.
Your first 90 days
Here's the outline from the kit, which I think is about right -
- Month 1. Sign the first employer, hire two counsellors and a lender liaison lead, and set up a booking line HR cannot see.
- Month 2. Counsel 100–150 employees. Submit plans to lenders and log every response time and outcome.
- Month 3. Send the employer anonymised results, like employees helped, monthly EMI reduced and penal charges reversed, and use that report to sign two more employers.
A good day 90 looks like three employers, 300 employees counselled, written lender acceptance for half the plans you've sent and zero confidentiality breaches. That last one isn't optional.
The risks
Three things can sink this, and none of them is technology -
- Lenders ignore you. Without a regulator behind the desk, some collections teams simply won't talk to a third party.
- Employees stay away. If staff think HR will find out then usage stays too low to justify a renewal.
- HR sees no payoff. Without proof of fewer salary advances or less absence, the benefit gets cut in the next budget.
My view is plain. If you can't build working contacts at 20–30 lenders in the first few months then don't scale the sales team yet.
Related ideas worth a look
If personal finance is your space then Feefinder is the closest neighbour. It reads bank and card statements, flags charges that may break RBI rules and drafts the complaint, first to the bank and then to the Ombudsman. It pairs well with a counselling desk, since contested charges are part of the same plan.
The directory also has ideas in very different fields if you want a comparison of difficulty. Oralguard sells workplace oral cancer screening to employers, which is another HR-paid benefit, though a far more regulated one. Ruinsquest sells AR history trails for school monument trips, and Wavejetty is a very hard, multi-year bet on wave power for fishing harbours. Next to those, a debt counselling desk at ₹40–75 L looks like one of the more manageable starts.
You can find more in the fintech startup ideas hub and across all the startup ideas for India.
Not if you only counsel and negotiate. You need to stay clear of lending, collecting EMIs and holding borrower money. If you add consolidation loans later then RBI's digital lending rules apply. This is not legal advice.
How much does it cost to start a debt counselling service?
The research estimate is ₹40–75 L for the first 12 months, mostly counsellor and liaison salaries, with smaller amounts for software, legal work and employer sales.
Why would an employer pay for debt counselling?
Staff in debt tend to ask for salary advances and take more time off. The pitch works only if you can show HR anonymised results that link to numbers they already track.
Talk to Yash
If you're weighing a debt counselling desk and want help shaping the employer pitch or the first lender conversations, I'm happy to talk it through. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Ideas are hypothetical and names fictional; sourced facts may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.