Award-winning socially driven startup CabDost, merges with Dvara Money

In a step towards building financial dignity and accelerating financial wellbeing in the urban underserved, the award-winning socially driven startup, CabDost, that serves the taxi drivers and other gig and unorganised communities to file their taxes and help plan their finances, merges with Dvara Money, a Dvara initiative (formerly IFMR Trusteeship Services Pvt. Ltd.).

Dvara Money caters to India's growing urban gig-economy workers and the blue-collar segment. It offers personalised financial solutions based on behavioural insights and helps customers improve their financial wellness. CabDost is a regional tech platform servingthe taxi drivers and unorganised communities through tax and other advisory services. Through direct filed engagements and digital initiatives, CabDost has been able to have a large impact in reducing informalities & building credibility by organising financial inclusion drives impacting more than lakh community members across 15 cities offline and 100 cities online.

"CabDost has been working relentlessly over the last few years to encourage Taxi drivers in adopting the formal financial system, pay their income tax, in turn making them eligible to plan their finances and access funds from banks, financial institutions and registered fintechs, like Dvara Money. Together we aim to offer a full-service financial service offering and facilitate the distribution of financial products by leveraging technology and deep customer insights and bring Urban Bharat within the formal financial umbrella," said Samir Shah - Executive Vice-Chair & Managing Trustee, Dvara Trusteeship Services Pvt. Ltd.

"CabDost has been doing great work in bringing tax returns to the Urban Bharat segment. Leveraging our expertise in facilitating financial wellness in the form of Spark Account, Dvara Money will empower this segment with financial services, along with other benefits like tax returns, which will enable our customers to be better prepared to face challenges in the present and future. As a combined entity, we will be leveraging a community first approach with data insights from CabDost's previous 50000+ tax filings and deep understanding about the financial services to curate Savings first wealth management advisory, thus nudging them away from risky chit funds," said Pramod Ghorpade, Co-Founder & Director, Dvara Money.

"We started CabDost to bring financial inclusion after our research with 3000 drivers realising that the new age contract workforce is excluded due to credibility issues. We are handholding communities through mass awareness about tax filing, PAN and Aadhaar linking and financial literacy sessions across the country. We have built stress-free assisted mode for tax filing to help plan their finances," said Yamuna Sastry, Founder & Chief Enabling Officer, CabDost. 

In the last three years, CabDost has been running as a `profit with purpose' startup. The company has partnered with India's leading aggregators, Airport authorities and other businesses with a scalable revenue model. The startup has been focussing on simplifying tax & compliance needs by facilitating audited financial statements while partners apply for loans, registrations & GST filing.

"Most of the revenues have been reinvested for 10000+ free IT-filing campaigns, spreading awareness on financial literacy for both taxi drivers and their spouses, besides organising health camps, sessions about Government schemes and career counselling sessions for gig workforce children," Yamuna said, adding Shafeeque Thazhatheri, co-founder said"Together we aim at building India's leading digital platform for financial products exclusively built for the Urban Bharat."