Uday Kotak: How an outsider built a bank from scratch and made it one of the best
Uday Kotak has stepped down as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Kotak Mahindra Bank, the bank he started in 1985, which is India's third-largest private lender by market value. «An investment of ₹10,000 with us in 1985 would be worth around ₹ 300 crore today,» Kotak said.
That's the measure of the miracle wrought by Kotak. Rarely in the world has such a vast financial services conglomerate come up within one generation.
A small bill-discounting business became India's third-largest private bank in less than four decades because the man who built it put his own name on it and then toiled to build trust. Now, though his surname will stay on the brand 'Kotak Mahindra', the man has withdrawn to the background. Asia's richest banker was not a big man when he started out.
The accidental banker
Can an accident that leaves you struggling for life make you super rich? It can, if you ask Kotak whom an accident made worth more than $13 billion.
Kotak had a good head for numbers in college but his first love was cricket. A promising player, he was the captain of his college team while doing MBA at Jamnalal Bajaj Institute. During a Kanga League match, a ball hit him on the head, He took several months to heal and had to miss college for a year.
You can call him an accidental banker for it was this accident that veered him away from a career in cricket to one in finance.
The canny capitalistKotak's father had landed in Mumbai from Karachi after the Partition and ran a flourishing cotton trade with offices in Shanghai and Karachi too. Kotak lived in a large house where dozens of family members stayed under one roof and ate from the same kitchen. The joint family had a joint business too.
