Singapore-based lender DBS Bank is charting out aggressive growth plans in India having earlier received Reserve Bank of India's green light to offer banking services in the country through a wholly-owned subsidiary model.
DBS had entered India in 1994 when it had opened a representative office in Mumbai. A year later, it started offering corporate banking services. It launched a digital bank in 2016.
Under RBI guidelines, foreign banks operating in the country through a wholly-owned subsidiary model are treated at par with local banks. It also gives more freedom for the lender to scale up in the country.
"With DBS Bank India, DBS will accelerate its growth plans, expand its operations and build greater scale in India through a phygital model to further serve large corporates, small and medium enterprises (SME) and individual customers," the lender said.
DBS, currently, operates in 12 cities in India. It now intends to expand to 25 cities and establish over 100 customer touchpoints, which will include branches as well as kiosks, over the next 12-18 months. It will open 9 new branches in March itself and expand into Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore and Ludhiana.
It will continue to expand in existing markets, for instance, opening new branches in Mumbai, Noida and Gurugram and will also separately open five branches in unbanked rural markets.
The bank has built a sizeable presence in corporate lending and now sees consumer banking and SME lending as growth drivers in coming years.
"We have built a fairly large, large-corporate and mid-corporate business. We will build the consumer and SME businesses over the next 5 years. Currently, consumer business is still less than 10 per cent. Our aim is to get share of our retail business, both on liability plus asset side, to about 30 per cent of our revenue and profitability," said Surojit Shome, CEO, DBS Bank India.
The company last year started offering personal loans on its Digi Bank platform to 2.5 million customers, which it intends to grow further. It also offers home loans to affluent customers in the 12 cities it currently operates in. That will also be selectively expanded as it grows its network, said Shome.
Its balance sheet has crossed Rs 50,000 crore this financial year ending March 31, which it hopes to triple over the next five years, he added.
DBS Bank has thus far put in Rs 7,700 worth capital, including Rs 1,800 crore it invested in calendar 2018. It will spend Rs 125-150 crore in expanding the network.
DBS will be the second bank to have received the central bank approval to operate through a wholly owned subsidiary route, State Bank of Mauritius being the other bank.