Why We Built SchemeSaathi
It didn't start as a business idea. It started as a "wait, seriously?" moment.
One of us was helping our grandmother apply for a pension scheme she was fully eligible for. Simple, right? Except it took four visits to a government office, two forms she couldn't read properly, and a neighbor's son who "knew someone" to finally get it sorted. She'd been eligible for over two years. Two years of a benefit just... sitting there, unclaimed, because nobody told her it existed.
And the more we looked, the more we realized this wasn't a one-off story. It's basically everyone's story.
There's a farmer who doesn't know about the subsidy on his fertilizer. A college student who has no idea there's a scholarship literally designed for someone exactly like her. A small shop owner who's never heard of the loan scheme that could've saved his business. Not because they weren't smart or didn't try — but because the information was hiding in some government PDF, written in language that felt like it wasn't even meant for them.
That really annoyed us, honestly. We kept thinking — this isn't an awareness problem, it's an access problem. The schemes exist. The money is allocated. The help is real. It's just... impossible to find if you don't already know what to search for.
So we asked ourselves a dumb-simple question: What if finding a scheme felt like texting a friend, instead of filling a government form?
That's basically the whole idea behind SchemeSaathi. Not some big tech innovation — just a friend (a "saathi") who asks you a few basic things about your life and says, "hey, this scheme is literally made for you, here's how to apply."
We're not trying to fix the government. We're just trying to close the gap between people and the help that's already meant for them.
Because honestly? Nobody should lose out on something they deserve just because nobody told them about it.
