Does your banking app turn awareness into actions for a better world? Thanks to Sourabh Sharma, this one does

If you’ve ever opened the LiveBetter platform in your DBS digibank app, clocked the carbon footprint (and price) of the meal you had last night with friends, and decided to do better next time – you have Sourabh Sharma to thank for that.

As product head of DBS LiveBetter, Sourabh – and his team – is responsible for creating the little nudges that empower consumers to do more for the planet, whether it’s buying high quality carbon credits to offset one’s emissions, or making small lifestyle changes (like taking public transport instead of a private hire ride) to minimise one’s carbon footprint.

“Today you have an app to order food, you have an app to order a taxi. Why don't you have an app to take action, to help you fight climate – change which is one of the biggest problems today?” said Sourabh of the sustainability rationale behind LiveBetter.

The actions aren’t just limited to lifestyle changes. The app also gives consumers options to invest in funds that have high ESG ratings. “We made sure that we enabled sustainability in everyday banking products as much as possible,” says Sourabh.

Tackling “the biggest challenge of our generation”

Building banking apps is perhaps not the most obvious way to address issues like climate change and sustainability, but Sourabh is of the view that one shouldn’t wait for the “right moment” or quit one’s job to make a 180° career change to take action.

“I have always been a product builder. I like building products which everyday consumers can use. And I always had this passion for sustainability,” he says. “I think a particular trait of entrepreneurs is that they always have this itch at the back of their hand or in the back of their mind, and they want to solve problems.”

For Sourabh the “biggest challenge of our generation” was without a doubt, climate change: “I thought, what can I do to enable all of us to do something about it?...How can we really incentivise people for this?”

In 2019, over drinks with his boss, Sourabh shared the idea of rewarding consumers for taking climate action. “You do good, you build a better world, you take actions and you get rewarded for it,” he says. “It creates this nice virtuous cycle where you feel good and then you do more of those actions and then you get more rewards.”

At the time, Sourabh was the product lead for digibank India and digibank Indonesia. Managing product build for these markets was intense, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, forcing people to work from their homes.

His brainchild hatched over drinks seemed destined to sit on the backburner. But one day, while everyone was still isolated at home, his boss reached out, asking if Sourabh was still interested in working on the idea. “So that’s how it all started.”

An email was sent out and the idea was shared during a DBS townhall.

To Sourabh’s surprise, it drew a good response. “Initially, I thought they are just, like, being nice and polite, but they actually came up with a lot of ideas and I soon had some developers, some designers who would join in these sessions – we used to always do it like 5.30pm or 6pm – and I was surprised at how much time everyone took out of their schedules,” he recalls.

Beginning with six or seven people, the project received funding from DBS and was supported by a full-fledged team in 2021– and LiveBetter was born.

A key focus of LiveBetter was to ensure it worked within the DBS ecosystem. “In fact, it is almost like it is imperative that you use what is already built out there,” said Sourabh. “You connect with existing systems and make sure that whatever has been built, you make a multiplier effect on top of that.”

Invest Better with LiveBetter by DBS

For example, by surfacing investment funds with high ESG ratings already offered by DBS, the team put them within easy reach of the everyday digibank user. “We took an existing product and kind of made sure that people are able to access it easily, understand what these funds are, and then go out and invest in them in a few clicks,” says Sourabh.

Neither do digibank users have to venture far to offset their carbon footprint on unavoidable emissions. While the platform helps users gain awareness to change their habits and behaviours to minimise their carbon footprint, an option to purchase high quality carbon offsets appears next to the monthly summary of their carbon emissions to simplify offsetting necessary actions or spends.

To date, digibank users have collectively offset 2.72 million kilogrammes of carbon.

A call to action that raised SGD 1.2 million

When the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake happened, the LiveBetter team was able to act fast and incorporate a fundraising campaign into the platform within a day. By the following week, the campaign had raised over a million dollars.

“That was a moment where I felt humbled as well as I felt that the product is really being used for the purpose it was made for,” says Sourabh.

Despite LiveBetter’s impressive milestones, Sourabh stresses the goal isn’t in numbers. “The goal is a change in consumer behaviour and if we can achieve some of these changes in our behaviour,” he says.

“If you can get to a point where people log into the app, not because they want to do a banking transaction, but because they want to live better, that would really be a success for the product.”