Scale for relevance, not just for size: Kotak Mahindra Bank's new CEO

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₹3,005 crore, below Bloomberg analysts' expectations of ₹3,163 crore. The bank's net interest income, the difference between interest earned and interest expended, rose nearly 16% year-on-year to ₹6,553 crore. Provisions and contingencies increased to ₹579 crore at the end of December quarter from ₹149 crore a year ago.

During the quarter under review, the bank made additional provisions of ₹190 crore against investments in an Alternative Investment Fund, having downstream exposure to debtor companies, and ₹168 crore for trading and mark-to-market losses. The bank continued to face challenges in deposit growth, with the Current and Savings Account (CASA) ratio dipping to 47.7% at the end of the December quarter, from 48.3% in the previous quarter and 53.3% a year earlier. To counter this, Kotak is focusing on products like ActivMoney, which offers a sweep-in facility, to boost its CASA.

Deposits grew 18.5% year-on-year and 1.9% sequentially and advances rose 16% on year and 3% quarter-on-quarter. Analysts noted Vaswani's assurance that the bank's credit growth would remain unaffected by deposit challenges, given its comfortable liquidity position. "So what we're doing really is we're looking at product segmentation, thinking of the customer and then going actively.

This ActivMoney worked for us. For senior citizens, percentage of deposits in the system is quite high. We have launched deposit at the rate of 7.8% which is one among the general competitive rates," said Shanti Ekambaram, whole time director, Kotak Mahindra Bank, during the call with media.