A student-led research initiative
Where South Indian culture meets the economics of everyday money.
Filtercoffee2Finance is a field-research project studying how households across South India save, spend, and think about money — from gold-buying in a recession to how a family decides who holds the purse strings.
How we work
We record conversations, transcribe them into structured data, and look for patterns — treating oral history as seriously as a spreadsheet.
01
Listen
Voice and video interviews with families across Chennai and beyond, in Tamil and English.
02
Transcribe & Code
Recordings become structured spreadsheets — themes, amounts, decisions, and who made them.
03
Publish Findings
Patterns become short, plain-language insights and open data, published as they're ready.
Current research themes
Three completed studies. Full findings, methodology, and limitations on each.
From the field
Ninety conversations, recorded in homes across Chennai.
Auto drivers, domestic workers, IT managers, business owners. Every finding on this site traces back to a recording, a transcript, and a coded spreadsheet row.
Hear the respondentsGet involved
Share your story
Be interviewed for the project — your household's experience with money matters.
Participate →