Setup help and a member app for small worker-owned credit cooperatives
TL;DR Coopbooks helps groups of informal workers, like domestic workers, vendors or weavers, register a thrift and credit cooperative and run it properly. Members save and repay through UPI into the society's own bank account, and the books stay audit-ready. The society pays a small monthly fee per member, and unions or NGOs often fund the setup.
Member-owned credit is an old idea in India, and it usually goes wrong on records and governance rather than on intent. At the end of March 2018, only 46,405 of India's 95,238 primary agricultural credit societies were in profit[1]. In December 2022, 76 multi-state cooperative societies, cooperative banks among them, were in liquidation[2].
The failures follow a pattern. One secretary keeps the books, members can't see their own balances, loans go to insiders and the annual meeting is a formality.
So what do informal workers who want to pool savings do? They either stay as unregistered chit circles, where nothing protects them, or they give up because registration and compliance look like a mountain of paperwork.
First, the regulatory bit - Coopbooks gives software and registration support only. It never takes deposits, lends or holds money. Every rupee sits in the society's own bank account, and the society stays registered under its state cooperative act or the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act.
A group of 50 to 500 workers gets help drafting byelaws, filing with the registrar and opening a bank account. After that, each member has a phone app in their language showing their savings, loan, repayment schedule and the society's monthly accounts. Collections run through UPI to the society's account and post to the ledger on their own. Loan approvals need two committee members, and every member can see the total lent to committee members. The annual meeting and its votes happen on the app as well as in the room.
The original version of this idea pitched a decentralised, token-style cooperative. Pooling money from the public outside a regulator is a crime under the 2019 deposit-scheme ban, with prison terms of two to seven years[3]. A registered cooperative already gives members ownership, and what it's missing is clean, open books.
Members use the app. The society pays a monthly fee per member, which I'd test at ₹10–25 (my assumption, as I found no public benchmark). Setup is the hard sell because a new group has no money yet. Unions, livelihood NGOs and CSR programmes that already organise informal workers are the likely payers for the first year, with a fixed fee per society formed.
The Multi-State Cooperative Societies law was amended in 2023 to add an election authority and an ombudsman who must decide member complaints within three months[2]. The Centre is spending ₹2,516 Cr to put more than 67,930 PACS onto common software, and it released a national cooperation policy in July 2025[4]. Registrars and members are slowly getting used to cooperatives running on software.
Nobody publishes a figure for software spending by small credit cooperatives. India has more than 848,000 active cooperatives, according to the National Cooperative Database as reported in a public encyclopedia entry[5], and WOCCU data cited there counts about 20 million credit-union members in India[6].
Both are neighbours that cover every kind of cooperative. Your market is the much smaller set of new or small thrift and credit societies.
The government's PACS computerisation gives agricultural credit societies a common system[4], but it doesn't cover urban thrift societies or new worker collectives. Open-source core banking software exists for lenders to the unbanked[7], and it could work as an engine, though it has no member app or registration help. Kenya's savings and credit cooperatives show the model at national scale[6].
I couldn't verify an Indian product that combines setup and member-facing books for small worker societies.
| Difficulty | Moderate (42/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹50–90 L |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The software is ordinary. Registration rules and timelines differ from state to state, and some registrars move at their own sweet pace. Selling into each new group means weeks of in-person meetings, and your team has to teach first-time committee members how to keep a society honest.
Coopbooks needs no RBI licence while it stays a software and registration helper. The societies it serves are the ones that register.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI approve loans or decide who is a member. Those are committee decisions under the society's byelaws.
Want to work out the AI layer for Coopbooks? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I have a soft spot for this one, but it is slow, field-heavy work. It suits a founder who has worked in cooperatives, microfinance or worker organising. If you're hoping to build a lender then it's a poor fit.
Prove two things first - that ten societies in one state can register within six months, and that members open the app at least once a month.
Plan for roughly ₹50–90 L, with much of it going on field teams who help societies register and train their committees.
Not an RBI licence, as long as you never collect or hold members' money. Each society registers under its state act or the multi-state act, and you follow the DPDP Act for member data.
Yes. Savings and credit cooperatives exist in many countries, Kenya being a well-known case. Check how your local cooperative law and registrar work first.
The free Coopbooks validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the cooperative-law and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for worker groups and their organisers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Coopbooks or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting societies registered quickly and keeping members trusting the books, and that's exactly the kind of thing I help founders with. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
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.