Door one · The bank
"No."
No CIBIL score. No income proof. No formal employment. Three years of perfect salary payments exist only in one family's memory — and memory is not a document.
Application not even opened.
ಊರು ooru · noun · one's native place — where you are known
The financial identity layer for India's informal workers.
Employer-backed credit · Health insurance · CIBIL building — for 5 crore domestic workers banks have never reached, built from the work they already do.
First pilot: Bengaluru · 2026 · Now enrolling early households & partners
The problem
Meet Kavitha. She has three doors to knock on.
She has cooked for the same family for three years and earns ₹14,000 a month, paid on time, every month. Her husband needs a ₹2 lakh surgery. Watch what happens next.
Door two · Friends & family
"We wish we could."
Her network has already given ₹5–10k each. Everyone she knows earns like she does. In a community where everyone is one emergency away, no one can absorb yours.
Love is not liquidity.
Door three · The moneylender
"Yes — sign here."
₹8,000 a month in interest. The principal never reduces. Her family's land stands as collateral, and the clause says 90 days. This is the only door that opens.
48% a year. The land at stake.
This is not a lending problem. It is a visibility problem. The moneylender says yes because he can see what the bank cannot: her steady work, her standing in the neighbourhood, her word. Ooru exists to make those things count — officially, portably, in her own name.
The scale
Kavitha is one of five crore.
An entire workforce — cooks, cleaners, caregivers, drivers, helpers — runs India's households and remains structurally invisible to its financial system.
5 Cr+
domestic & household workers across India
< 5%
have any access to formal credit today
95%
still turn to informal lenders, despite having bank accounts
₹0
the cost of Ayushman Bharat health cover for eligible families — most simply never enrolled
Figures are estimates compiled from our research; sources and methodology will be published with the pilot.
The insight
The trust already exists. Ooru makes it legible to capital.
Kavitha has no credit score — but she has an employer who has trusted her with their home and children for three years, pays her every month, and will vouch for her without hesitation.
That trust is the strongest credit signal in the country. Nobody has ever recorded it — until now.
India already built the rails: Aadhaar, UPI, WhatsApp in every pocket. Ooru is the missing layer on top — the one that turns everyday trust between real people into an identity the formal system can read.
How it works
Follow Kavitha's first year with Ooru.
Keep scrolling — the phone follows the story. Everything below is built for real life: interruptions, shared phones, low data, and five languages.
Day 1 · At the doorstep
She gets an identity in under 10 minutes.
Phone number, Aadhaar e-KYC, bank link — done on her own phone, in her own language, with audio guidance at every step. She gets a digital Ooru card with a QR code. Her identity belongs to her, not to any employer. Government worker registration (e-SHRAM) is handled in the same sitting.
Consent is asked separately for each thing, in plain words — as the DPDP law requires.
Every day · 5 seconds each side
Work and salary get recorded — by both sides.
Her employer scans her QR once, then marks attendance with one tap and logs salary each month. Kavitha confirms from her side. Two taps a day become a verified income record — the document she never had. Works over WhatsApp too, so employers never need to install anything.
Each employer sees only their own records. Never anyone else's.
Month 3–6 · Quietly building
Her record starts opening doors.
Months of verified work, salary and reliability begin to add up. Her first credit bureau entry appears. In the app she sees a simple picture of her progress — not a confusing number, just a path: month 6 of 18. Nothing to do; showing up is the work, and now showing up counts.
The emergency · The day it matters
This time, the fair door opens.
Her husband needs surgery. She requests ₹2 lakh in the app. Her employers confirm her tenure and salary in a minute. A regulated lender sees her verified record and says yes — money the same day, repayment sized so the EMI stays within her salary, no land as collateral, ever. The moneylender never enters the story.
Every cost in rupees, shown before she agrees. A fact sheet in her language, as RBI rules require.
Every month after · Compounding
Each EMI builds the future, automatically.
The EMI is deducted alongside salary — nothing for her to remember. Each payment grows her CIBIL score. Government life and accident cover run in the background for a few rupees a month, and a small recurring deposit builds her first savings. By month 18, banks compete for the customer they once refused to see.
The platform
Three tools. One identity. Everyone wins.
A worker, her employers, and a fair lender each get exactly what they need — connected by one shared record that the worker controls.
Ooru for workers
A phone app · 5 languages · audio-first
Her identity, her record, her money — in one place she controls, built for someone using a smartphone app for the first time.
- One-tap attendance and salary confirmation for every employer
- All employers, one profile — the record travels with her, job to job
- Loan request & EMI tracker — a simple bar, not a statement
- Watch your CIBIL grow with every on-time month
Everything inside
- Aadhaar + PAN onboarding with face match — no paperwork
- Insurance in two taps: govt life cover (≈₹36/month) & accident cover (₹20/year), Ayushman Bharat eligibility checked free
- Monthly savings (RD) with a partner bank, deducted alongside salary
- Flag a planned absence before the employer marks it
- Shareable loan statement PDF — proof of creditworthiness anywhere
- Referral QR — invite a friend, both earn platform credit
- Every alert in her language, with a listen button
Ooru for employers
WhatsApp or app · 30 seconds a month
You already trust her. This turns that trust into her future — with less effort than a grocery list.
- Scan her QR once — no forms, no data entry, ever
- One tap for attendance, one entry for salary each month
- Vouch in 60 seconds when she applies for a loan
- Set-and-forget EMI — deducted with salary, automatically
Everything inside
- Your whole household staff in one simple roster
- Everything works over WhatsApp — no app install needed
- Your records are private: no other employer ever sees them
- Monthly salary reminder so the record never lapses
- A soft reliability rating that helps her — never a public score
- One-time NACH consent; deductions then run themselves
Ooru for lenders
A dashboard for NBFCs & banks
A segment you could never underwrite, delivered with the verified data you never had — and none of the raw data you don't need.
- Applications arrive pre-verified — employer-confirmed income & tenure
- One score, 0–100 — you see the output, never the raw data
- One-click sanction to disbursal, with a full audit trail
- Compliance built in — fact statements and agreements auto-generated per RBI digital lending rules
Everything inside
- Live pipeline: received → scored → verified → approved → disbursed
- Portfolio health, repayment tracking and early-warning signals
- Community-cluster analytics to guide careful expansion
- Auto-generated regulatory and bureau reporting
- Daily reconciliation between Ooru and lender, auto-flagged
The score
A score built from the life she already lives.
CIBIL asks: what have you borrowed? Ooru asks a fairer question: how do you work? Keep scrolling — watch six honest signals build her score, one by one.
Tenure. Years with each employer — loyalty made visible.
+18Steady salary. Verified by employer and worker, month after month.
+16Reliability. Attendance and kept commitments over time.
+14The employer's word. A digital vouch from someone who trusts her with their home.
+14Repayment. Every on-time EMI compounds the score — and her CIBIL.
+12Community standing. Her neighbourhood cluster's track record lifts everyone in it.
+13The 87 shown here is an illustration of how signals combine — not a live score.
Build it with us
Two partners we're looking for right now.
An NBFC partner
To co-originate and carry credit risk on the first loan cohort in Bengaluru. Small book, deep learning, pre-verified borrowers no one else can reach.
Start the conversation →Housing societies for the pilot
2–3 societies in Bengaluru to validate the full model with their residents and the workers they employ. Your society becomes the first ooru.
Nominate your society →