The activities which are done by a Bank apart from its normal day to day transactions ( like deposit , withdrawl etc..) are called Para-Banking Activities / Operations.
Examples for the Para-Banking acticities that a Bank normally involves:
1.Global Debit Card
2.Global Credit Card
3.Bancassurance
3.Life Insurance Products
4.Non Life Insurance Products
5.Cash Management (SCMS)
There are more then 35 million depositors with Sahara that makes it 1 depositor out of every 30 India. So it seems to be secure to me and i have never heard anything wrong about Sahara in their 30 years of operation.So i recommend go a ahead and deposit as it is RBI regulated.
Mr. Subroto Roy Sahara is the Managing Worker and Chairman of Sahara India Pariwar conglomerate. The total asset base of tha company is reported to be 50,000 crore INR (around 11 billion USD). the organization has business interest in Finance - (Parabanking, Life Insurance, Mutual Fund), Real estate (Upcoming 217 Sahara city homes townships across India, Aamby Valley City - a full fledged premium class city near Mumbai plus many other projects), Media & entertainment (Sahara One general entertainment TV channel, Filmy - Hindi Cinema based TV channel, Firangi - yet to start TV channel catering world tv programmes and films dubbed in Hindi, Film production house with more that 40 movies already delivered, Sahara Samay bouquet of news channels which includes one national channel and 36 city specific channels, then there are a plethora of Hindi, urdu and English publications), tourism - Sahara Global travel and tourism services company. Sahara has also launched India's finest super delux hotel Sahara Star in the heart of Mumbai City. Sahara in the national sponsore of Indian Cricket team. Sahara does lots of social responsibility work too and is well known from metro cities to the small villages of India.