The Beeshi blog

What is Beeshi? The app for the savings circle you already run

Beeshi is a free app that keeps the record for your kitty, bhishi, committee or chitty. See the gap it fills, and why it never holds your money.

Most families in India know someone who runs a savings circle. A group of people who trust each other agree on an amount, everyone pays in each round, and one member takes the whole pot. The round repeats until every member has had a turn.

Beeshi is an app for that circle. It does not invent a new way to save. It keeps the record of the circle you already have, so every member can see what has been paid, who is next and what is still owed.

One circle, many names

In Maharashtra it is a bhishi. In the North it is a committee. In the South it is a chit or a chitty, and in Kerala a kuri. In cities everywhere it is a kitty party. The Indian Economic Service's explanation of chit funds calls them the Indian version of the rotating savings and credit associations found across the world.

Economists shorten that to ROSCA. A well-known study, The Economics of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (Besley, Coate and Loury, American Economic Review, 1993), looks at why the arrangement lasts. It lets people pool small, regular savings to reach a larger sum sooner than any of them could alone. It also looks at the weak point: whether the circle holds together when someone stops paying.

The idea has lasted for generations because it works. What has not changed in all that time is how the circle keeps track of itself. Our name comes from the first of those words. You can read more in our story and on many names.

The gap: a circle that runs on memory

A circle's money is only part of it. The other part is the record. In most groups that record lives in a notebook, a WhatsApp thread, a spreadsheet on the organiser's phone, or simply in people's heads.

That works until it doesn't:

• Who paid in March? Two members remember it differently, and nothing settles it.
• One person holds everything. The organiser keeps the book, collects the money and remembers the draw order. If they move away, fall ill or lose the notebook, the circle loses its history.
• The rules drift. The amount, the period and the order were agreed out loud at the first meeting. A year later, nobody is sure what was said.
• Getting paid early can feel like being ahead. A member who takes the pot early still owes every round that follows. In a circle of twelve paying ₹5,000 a month, the first winner receives the pot and still has ₹55,000 left to pay. It is easy to lose sight of that when nothing writes it down.
• The group stops meeting. A kitty is a social occasion first. When the meetings fade, the payments tend to follow.

None of these is a problem with the circle itself. Each one comes from keeping the record by hand.

What Beeshi does

Beeshi puts the record and the group's conversation in one app that every member has on their own phone.

A record everyone can see

Every contribution and payout goes on a ledger that is written once and never edited. A member records a payment and the admin confirms it, so no single person can make a payment appear on their own. Each member sees what they have put in and what they have taken out. When someone misses a round, the circle's record shows it.

Rules agreed once, and kept

When the circle is set up, the group agrees on the contribution amount, a monthly or quarterly period, how the order is decided and who the admins are. The app holds everyone to those terms. Anyone joining sees the full terms before they accept. Invitation links work only for the phone numbers the admin listed, so a stranger cannot walk in.

The way your circle already runs

Beeshi supports the two ways Indian circles usually work:

Read more about Kitty and Chitty. For the plan many families use at the jeweller, where you pay eleven instalments and the shop funds the twelfth, there is Jodi.

A smaller step each day

₹1,500 a month can feel like a wall. ₹50 a day is a habit. With Daily Save, members put a little aside each day, and Beeshi applies what they have saved to the contribution when it falls due. The same day's saving is never counted twice.

The room where the circle meets

Every circle comes with its own room: group chat, voice and video calls, snaps, and games the group can play together. The conversation stays next to the money instead of in a separate WhatsApp group. See The Room.

What Beeshi does not do

This part matters as much as the features.

• Beeshi never holds your money. There is no pooled account, no escrow and no float. Members pay each other exactly as they always have, by cash, UPI or bank transfer. Beeshi records what happened.
• Beeshi takes no commission. The app is free to use, with no subscription, no per-member charge and nothing held back behind a paid tier.
• Beeshi is not a chit fund company. Chit funds run as a business are governed by the Chit Funds Act, 1982 and registered with state governments. Beeshi is not a registered chit fund company and does not conduct chits. It is a record-keeping app, and it is not a party to any arrangement between the members of a circle.
• Beeshi does not chase debts. If a member stops paying, Beeshi reminds them and the missed rounds stay visible on the record. Beyond that, it is up to the admin and the guarantors. We say more about this on Trust & safety.

Who it is for

Beeshi is for the circle that already exists: relatives saving towards a wedding, neighbours who meet every month, colleagues running a committee, or a kitty group that has met for years. The app speaks eleven Indian languages, including English, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Bengali, so each member can use it in their own.

You do not need to change how your group saves. Beeshi only asks you to stop keeping the record on paper. How it works walks through the four steps to bring a circle across.