The encyclopedia · Finance & Accounting · Product decision · 2024
ESAF turned the kitchen rice canister into a bank account for rural Indian women.
The steel rice jar women already hid cash in became the bank: a hidden savings compartment that put rural women on the formal grid.
ESAF Small Finance Bank · McCann Worldgroup
the move
Millions of rural Indian women kept their savings out of banks. They did not trust or easily reach formal finance, so they saved cash at home, often in a steel rice canister, or dabba, that sits in every kitchen and is treated as both safe and auspicious.
ESAF Small Finance Bank could have opened branches and advertised. Instead it and McCann saw that the dabba was the cultural answer: a hidden, lockable compartment inside the very jar women already used for saving, routed through women and self-help groups as the deposit channel.
The account required no new habit and no scary visit. A woman who already saved in a dabba now saved in a dabba that was a bank account, built on the trust she had in the object and in the neighbour who brought it.
By 2025 the campaign had opened over 120,000 accounts with no reliance on traditional media, and it won two Gold Spikes, a Silver Spike and the Glass Spike for the Award for Change at Spikes Asia 2025, plus a Wood Pencil and shortlists at D&AD.
why it works
- The product took the cultural object women already trusted and made it the bank, so no leap of faith was needed.
- Selling through women and self-help groups put trusted local messengers in the channel instead of paid media.
- A discreet compartment addressed a real fear: that visible saving could invite pressure to lend the money out.
- Because the account was the familiar dabba, it spread by word of mouth rather than by advertising spend.
what transfers
To change a behaviour, don't ask people to change what they use. Turn the object they already trust into the new product, and adoption is free when the messenger is a neighbour.
what came after
Over 120,000 new accounts were opened without traditional media, and the idea travelled far beyond one bank. It was recognised with two Gold Spikes, a Silver Spike and the Glass Spike at Spikes Asia 2025, a Wood Pencil and two shortlists at D&AD, and it became a reference case for building a financial product around an existing cultural behaviour.
references
- McCann Worldgroup India shines at D&AD Awards 2025 with 4 wins and 3 shortlists
- McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific shines at Spikes Asia 2025 with meaningful wins across the region
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