LEADING WITH IMPACT

Piyush Gupta, the outgoing CEO of DBS Group, reflects on his journey in banking, championing social causes and his plans for the road ahead

- By Nafeesa Saini.

Often lauded as a star banker, Piyush Gupta spent the past 15 years transforming DBS Bank into a global powerhouse for digital banking and innovation. Come March 28, he will retire and step down as chief executive officer of DBS Group, leaving a lasting legacy with his unorthodox leadership.

Born in Meerut, India, Gupta spent 27 years at Citigroup, where he held various leadership roles across Asia. In 2001, he launched his entrepreneurial venture, the digital platform Go4i.com, in collaboration with the Hindustan Times, one of India's largest newspapers, but it was cut short by the dot-com bubble burst. The failure of his start-up was a humbling experience—one that Gupta has openly discussed, including its impact on his mental health. Yet, the setback fortified his resilience and shaped his tech-forward banking approach.

When he joined DBS Group in 2009, Gupta inherited a bank that had a reputation for inefficiency, earning the nickname of “Damn, Bloody, Slow”, wrote the bank’s former chief data and transformation officer Paul Cobban in his 2017 article 10 Lessons Learnt When DBS Came Out of the Stone Age. Gupta was aware of the challenges that awaited him. “Years ago, I came across research that stated that 71 per cent of people prefer going to a dentist [as] compared to going to a bank,” he recalls, referencing a three-year study by Scratch, a creative-consulting team operating within media company Viacom. “And that’s not a good way to feel after a whole career in banking.”