HDFC BANK BETS ON CROSS-SELLING

A bigger and more stable post-merger balance sheet is creating massive synergies and opportunities in attracting more business.

- RAGHU MOHAN

IN HIS note to shareholders in HDFC Bank’s FY23 annual report, Sashidhar Jagdishan made an observation which has not got the attention it deserves—only 2% of the bank’s customers sourced their home loans from it while 5% did it from other vendors. “The latter is equivalent to the size of our retail book. Home loan customers typically keep deposits that are five-seven times that of other retail customers. And about 70% of HDFC Ltd.’s customers do not bank with us. All these give us an idea about the size of the opportunity,” the HDFC Bank managing director and chief executive officer said while explaining why the merger with parent HDFC Ltd. was a wise decision (though long in the making). While Jagdishan did not mention the technical term for this opportunity, it is cross-sell—the number of products and services hawked to a customer.

The management tells Fortune India the bank is all about “cross-selling across customer segments and within customer segments by networking relationships.” The starting point of the cross-sell game does not matter. What’s important is that once you have on-boarded a customer, she remains hooked on. You may look at crosssell as air-brushed word for the dated expression, “share of wallet.”