Armed with new RBI approvals, HSBC India's Hitendra Dave wants a seat at the big banks' table

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: Foreign banks might have "lost the plot" about two decades ago to make it big in India, losing ground to local private banks, but HSBC India's chief executive, Hitendra Dave, now wants to use a recent approval to open new branches to regain some of that ground. In January, the bank got a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) go-ahead to open 20 branches across cities such as Lucknow, Amritsar, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, and Dehradun among others.

When completed, the expansion will take its total branch count to 46. The first of the new lot was opened in Vadodara earlier in December. Unlike other banks, Indian branches of foreign banks need regulatory approval to open branches.

“Twenty years back, foreign banks just lost the plot. We allowed private banks to become as big as they have become in one of the most profitable markets of the world and it was our incompetence, our inability to see the future," Dave said in an interview. Dave, who got the India CEO role in 2021, said he wants HSBC to be the fifth largest private sector bank in India.

Drivers of this growth will be the wealth and consumer businesses tapping into a growing phlanx of affluent customers. “I think there is room for only one international bank, while retaining its international character, way of operations, governance, legal entity structure, to aspire to be as big as the top five private banks," said Dave. “This is a wonderful opportunity presented to banks like ours; if we don't do justice to the opportunity, I will certainly not blame any regulatory issues or my head office." The pecking order among private Indian banks by assets as of 30 Septemberlists HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and IndusInd