We cater to the complete customer spectrum: Paresh Sukthankar, Dy MD, HDFC Bank

Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director, HDFC Bank, was part of its core founding team. He speaks about the bank’s growth strategies. Excerpts:

What is your mobile or digital strategy?
In the last two-three years we have become die-hard converts to the digital space. We are doing everything, from offering to the customer banking options on the mobile and desktop to using customer data and customer relationship management tools to provide a better product.


While there will be some customers who will be mobile only, our model is not either this or that. For rural customers who would like to know their balance, we have even started missed-call banking – where we let them know the balance in response to a missed call. We want our customers to decide what is convenient for them.

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Where will growth for HDFC Bank come from?
I do not think there are too many banks with our breadth. In most of the areas we are market leaders. We have always targeted growth ahead of the market and we want to grow 3-4 percentage points higher than the industry.

We are present in 2,500 cities/towns and have 55% of our physical presence in semi-urban and rural India, catering to the complete customer spectrum, including through self-help groups and joint liability groups.

Have you consciously avoided exposure to infrastructure?
We just believe our book needs to be diversified. Even at the peak we never had more than 3-4% infra on our books, so in hindsight it was wise, as we were selective.

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