Eko turned Delhi's corner shops into SBI bank counters with nothing but phones

For Delhi's migrant workers — labourers, rickshaw pullers, domestic help — visiting a bank branch could cost half a day's wage, so savings stayed in cash and remittances went by post. Founded in September 2007 by brothers Abhishek and Abhinav Sinha, Eko India Financial Services bet that the neighbourhood shop, not a new branch network, was the missing infrastructure. In November 2008 Bill Gates made a surprise personal visit to their Uttam Nagar pilot to see it working.

In February 2009 Eko became State Bank of India's business correspondent for a Mini Savings Account, launching that October with support from CGAP. Any grocery or chemist shop could become a customer service point: opening an account took about 10 minutes with a photo and basic ID, and customers could deposit as little as Rs 5 by handing cash to the shopkeeper, who typed numbers into his own phone — Eko had found semi-literate users were more comfortable typing digits than writing SMS. Retailers earned commission per account and per transaction.

The numbers validated the model: from about 6,000 customers on 31 December 2009, Eko reached over 40,000 accounts by April 2010 — 400 new accounts a day — with 1,500 daily transactions worth about Rs 10 lakh across 350 outlets in Delhi and districts of Bihar and Jharkhand. First-year transaction value exceeded Rs 7.1 crore. The same shop-as-bank pattern later became the template for India's business-correspondent and AePS agent networks.

The corner shop is the branch; the phone is the teller

Using shops that already sold mobile recharge meant zero new real estate and instant local trust.

Typing numbers on any phone removed the need for cards, terminals or literacy in SMS formats.

Rs 5 minimum deposits matched daily cash flow, so saving became a habit rather than an event.

Retailer commissions converted thousands of shopkeepers into an unpaid-by-the-bank salesforce.

Financial inclusion fails on the cost of the last mile, not the product. Put the bank inside shops customers already visit daily, and trust and volume follow.

Eko later pivoted into a platform company (Eko Platform Services, launched 2015), opening its rails to independent entrepreneurs and growing its agent network tenfold to about 150,000 across all Indian states. RBI's business-correspondent model it pioneered now underpins AePS cash-out and kirana-banking networks nationwide.