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4 weeks ago | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
Marquee investors — Currant Sea and Platinum Invictus, affiliates of Warburg Pincus and ADIA Private Equity, respectively — are set to pick up stakes in IDFC First Bank for a combined Rs 7,500 crore. V Vaidyanathan, managing director and CEO of IDFC First Bank, tells Shobhana Subramanian that the additional capital will help position the lender for growth. Excerpts:This is truly a big deal for IDFC First Bank…Yes, it is an important day for the bank.
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1 month ago | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
Bajaj Finance aims to have a share of 4-5% in retail credit over the next five years as it builds new lines of business, MD-designate Anup Saha tells Shobhana Subramanian. Excerpts:In this digital age, how many customers do you expect to be servicing in the next five years? How big is the cross-selling opportunity? Our customer franchise in the third quarter stood at 97.12 million and we are on course to cross the 100-million milestone in FY25.
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1 month ago | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
Fortune, they say, favours the bold. That certainly holds true for Sanjiv Bajaj. Although he inherited what was considered at the time to be the less-glamorous piece of the family business, the younger son of industrialist Rahul Bajaj has built a fabulous financial services franchise. While Bajaj Finance is a powerhouse in itself with a customer base of 97 million, Bajaj Finserv has made a mark in the insurance space.
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1 month ago | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
Axis Bank MD & CEO Amitabh Chaudhry believes the Citi acquisition has brought the bank more than it had expected in terms of business and retained customers. Chaudhry tells Shobhana Subramanian that deposits are a challenge and that until there is enough durable liquidity in the system, rates on deposits are unlikely to come down. Excerpts:What is the bank’s strategy to garner more deposits?
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2 months ago | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
With the regulator lifting restrictions on Kotak Mahindra Bank acquiring customers digitally and via mobile phones, the lender is hoping to onboard customers at a pace of 400,000-500,000 a month once again. Its MD & CEO Ashok Vaswani tells Shobhana Subramanian the rebuilt 811 app has the potential to integrate offerings and deliver them to customers. Excerpts: How much more, in terms of business, customers and deposits do you think the revamped Kotak 811 app can deliver?
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
financialexpress.com | Urvi Malvania |Shobhana Subramanian
It’s been about a decade since Asish Mohapatra, Bhuvan Gupta, Ruchi Kalra, Vasant Sridhar and Nitin Jain set out to build a B2B platform that would supply materials to small businesses. It also wanted to trade in these products. Over the years, OfBusiness acquired a clutch of manufacturing and processing units, which have been merged into main entity, ahead of the firm’s Initial Public Offering slated for end-2025. Already a subscriber?
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Oct 27, 2024 | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
In a world of fragile Fintechs, PhonePe’s has been a stand-out story. As it closes in on ten years of its existence, revenues have crossed Rs 5,000 crore. These have come largely from payments transactions, a business which most believed, could at best be a loss-leader. Not only are revenues flowing in, they are doing so with much less incentivising than in the initial years; the cash backs —used to win over customers—are now down to just Rs 15 crore from approximately Rs 950 crore in FY19.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
Going by how he has made one of the toughest jobs in the country look easy, it’s not surprising that Dinesh Khara’s favourite book is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. The former State Bank of India (SBI) chairman was always a fan of the management stream, but after earning a degree at the Faculty of Management Studies of the Delhi School of Economics, he decided he would become a banker.
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Sep 30, 2024 | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
He wanted to be a pilot, but became a banker instead — first in Citibank and then at ICICI Bank. In 2010, he was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and mortgaged his house to buy into a loss-making non-banking financial company. Looking back, V Vaidyanathan, 56, doesn’t regret the big risk that he took giving up a good job and a board seat at ICICI Bank to build a retail lending business.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
financialexpress.com | Shobhana Subramanian
Three-and-a-half decades of managing money for the $66-billion Aditya Birla Group can be a tough job, but Sushil Agarwal says he has enjoyed every moment of it. The group chief financial officer (CFO) of the $66-billion group says half in jest that he is looking for some “calm” and would love to be in Uttarakhand when he’s done with the hurly burly of the corporate world. But that’s still in the realm of “fantasy”, as he doesn’t intend to let that happen in a hurry.
