Ashok Vaswani, the recently appointed MD and CEO of Kotak Bank, feels that it is imperative to grow for relevance, not merely for the sake of size’ while changing for scale. The consumer must be satisfied for everything else to fall into place. Nothing else matters if you can’t satisfy the client,” Vaswani stated in his initial speech to shareholders.
Vaswani, a global banker, was unexpectedly appointed as Kotak Bank’s new MD and CEO last year. The billionaire banker Kotak assembled a team and a new plan before stepping down to steer the bank’s transition into a tech-savvy organization by emphasizing customer excellence in a manner akin to that of Amazon, the goliath of e-commerce.
“We are deeply determined to get it right by our customers by understanding their needs and building appropriate propositions and thus being the right partner to them – which sometimes may even mean saying no,” he stated. “The credit goes to Uday Kotak, who has built this exceptional business.”
Uday Kotak started bill discounting in the middle of the 1980s to grow his business from a little participant in the financial services industry to the Kotak Mahindra Group, a financial behemoth. The group has increased substantial assets, loans, and market capitalization in over forty years. It has a wide-ranging presence in the banking, insurance, and wealth management sectors of the financial industry.
“Over the last few decades, he has been instrumental in managing challenging situations like the COVID-19 epidemic, global financial catastrophe, NBFC crisis, etc. with his extraordinary attention to detail and basic principles. Our success over the years has been greatly attributed to Uday’s ability to assemble a capable management team that exudes entrepreneurial zeal,” he stated.
“The institutional construction that he has accomplished is beyond words. And that’s precisely what we want to maintain—a premier organization that endures throughout generations,” he continued.
The bank has recruited elite international talent in the fields of technology, marketing, branding, customer experience, data and risk analytics, and branding within the last two years.
As the Chief Technology Officer, Milind Nagnur, a seasoned professional with a wealth of expertise at JP Morgan, Citibank, and Wells Fargo, has taken over. Former Amazon employee Bhavnish Lathia has joined as Head of Technology and Chief of Customer Experience.
Experienced professional Rohit Bhasin is the Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Retail Liabilities Product at FMCG behemoth Unilever. Bhaskar Kumar has been appointed Chief Risk Officer. He has experience working for GE Capital, HSBC, and Bajaj Finserv.
“These are, no doubt, ambitious goals, but we are not playing for the short term,” he stated.
