A Souharda co-operative is a co-operative society registered in Karnataka under the Karnataka Souharda Sahakari Act, 1997, rather than under the state's older Karnataka Co-operative Societies Act. Souharda Federal Co-operative describes itself as the self-regulatory apex body for co-operatives registered under that Act, membership in which is mandatory for every Souharda-registered society.
Institutions such as Sree Charan Souharda Sahakari Bank run pigmy-style deposit accounts alongside ordinary banking, with rates tiered by how long the deposit is held: Sree Charan's own page states 2.5% within a year, rising to 4.5% for deposits held beyond five years. Like any pigmy scheme, the account is built on daily or regular small collections rather than a single lump sum.
For a depositor, what matters most is that "Souharda" describes a different registration law, not a different level of safety. A Souharda co-operative is a society, not automatically a bank, so whether it is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India and whether its deposits carry DICGC insurance depends on whether it separately holds a banking licence, exactly as with any other credit co-operative society. Pigmity found no single, general statement covering every Souharda institution's regulatory status, so this is a case where the individual institution's own licence, not its label, decides the answer, the same caution that applies to a patpedhi or any other credit society running a daily-deposit account.