"I'm bringing Kotak under one narrative, one strategy, one umbrella”

Ashok Vaswani is a global banker who spent most of his career overseas at institutions like Citi Group and Barclays, among others.

Around a year ago, he took charge of Kotak Mahindra Bank as MD & CEO. In an exclusive interview with Business Today's Siddharth Zarabi, the man at the helm of India's fourth-largest private bank talks about the country's banking sector, the challenges, and the road ahead for Kotak Mahindra Bank, among other things. Edited excerpts:

Q: How has the past year been?

A: I got back to India after 35 years, and I always joke that it took all those years of training for this job, but here I am. And this one year has been quite incredible.

The India I left and the India I've come back [to are] obviously very, very, very different... But Kotak is an incredible story. It's a great brand. Kotak manufactures every single financial services product there is. And getting those products and services to our customers is a unique opportunity. And I think Kotak has done exceptionally well in the past, and I think it's poised to do great things [in the times] to come.

Q: You took over at a time when India's banking space had gone through many changes. How would you describe it today?

A: I think Indian banking has come a long, long way. The Reserve Bank of India has done quite a remarkable job of opening up the banking industry, opening up financial services... When I left India in 1987, it was at an extremely nascent stage... [then] being able to get a car loan in like four to five days was considered a very, very big thing. But things have changed dramatically, and I think the RBI has guided this process along remarkably well and I am sure there will be further changes... The good news is that India has opened up on its own terms and will continue to do so.

Q: From an industry perspective, how would you describe the unsecured credit stress?