Pune, India

What does your child actually know about money?

Nobody in India has ever measured it. Not the schools, not the boards, not the government. So we are building the measure — and it begins with a few hundred families.

Fifteen minutes, with your child beside you. You get their answers, and a report the same evening.

Take the survey free, and quite good fun
What a 10-year-old saidexample
Where does the money in our house come from?
From the ATM
You've spent your whole ₹200 in a week. Then what?
Then you will give me more
How much are your school fees?
Maybe ₹5,000?

Three steps, one sitting.

No sign-up, no app, nothing to install. Just you, your child, and fifteen minutes at the kitchen table.

  1. 1

    Sit down together

    We give you the questions. You read them out and write down exactly what your child says — even when it makes you wince. Especially then.

  2. 2

    Make one real offer

    ₹50 now, or ₹100 on Sunday. An actual choice, with actual money, honoured either way. How a child handles waiting tells you more than any quiz could.

  3. 3

    Read what comes back

    The same evening: what their answers suggest, and a few small things worth trying this week. Most of them take ten minutes.

Indian adults who can handle money
27 in every 100 are financially literate.
the other 73 were simply never taught.
NCFE Financial Literacy and Inclusion Survey, 2019 — the most recent national survey. Urban 33%, rural 24%.

This is what we are starting from.

  • 225 million Indian children aged five to thirteen — the largest such cohort anywhere in the world.
  • Not one structured programme teaching any of them about money before the age of eleven.
  • India does not teach this. It does not measure it either.

Money is the medium. Behaviour is the subject.

Most adults who handle money badly were never taught the habits underneath it — how to want, how to wait, how to decide, how to tell when something is wrong. Those habits form long before anyone opens a bank account.

We are starting at the beginning, with Indian children aged six to fourteen.

CA Rushabh Jamdade
Chartered Accountant · Pune
Formerly PwC, Thermo Fisher Scientific
Visiting faculty, SIBM Pune and MIT World Peace University

Money Smart Kids is a study of how Indian children aged six to fourteen understand money — what they believe about where it comes from, whether they can wait for it, and what they do when it runs out.

This survey is the first part of it. There is more coming.

— Rushabh

Fifteen minutes. One child. One honest answer.

If you have a child between six and fourteen, this is worth more to the work than anything else you could give it.

Take the survey