Product: ETNEWKolkataBS PubDate: 24-08-2015 Zone: KolkataCity Edition: 1 Page: ETKCPG5 User: shrutip1709 Time: 08-23-2015 22:11 Color: CMYK

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Bengal’s First Since Independence: Bandhan, the micro-lender that has made inroads into the heart of Bengal, kicks off its journey as a full-fledged bank, steering the state to a new height at a time when business and industrial activities have suffered unabated downslide A Bank from Bengal for Bharat FM inaugurates Bandhan Bank at an event which draws the bigwigs of banking fraternity and, Ghosh, the brain behind Bandhan, is hailed by all Bandhan is An Experiment Born Again, This That’s Poised to Time as a Bank Reshape Banking

MD and CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh with FM Arun Jaitley at the launch of Bandhan Bank in the city on Sunday. Arun Jaitley lights the ceremonial lamp in presence of Bengal FM Amit Mitra. branches and 2022 customer ser- Our Bureau vice centres, try to raise its stake in In Ghosh, Jaitley Sees Return Bandhan Bank MD and CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh greets the bottom of the pyramid custom- RBI Deputy Governor HR Khan at the event. Kolkata: Bandhan Bank, the first ers with savings, remittance and private bank to become operation- insurance services, even as the es- who was present at the inaugu- al in India in a decade, will focus on tablished ones such as State Bank of Entrepreneurship in Bengal Our Bureau ral event, said that Bandhan small and micro enterprises, besi- of India and ICICI Bank are in a Bank would serve the twin pur- des micro loan borrowers, and ke- race to have more customers from Kolkata: The Bandhan Bank ex- pose of women empowerment ep out of large corporate lending. the unbanked population. tial of this area which is of ex- periment may shape India’s and poverty alleviation. Band- The first microfinance company It will stay away from large corpo- treme importance.” banking for tomorrow, felt the han got a licence last year, along to transform into a full-fledged rate lending, managing director Jaitley calls for He said that Prime Minister Na- who’s who of banking fraternity with IDFC, which will launch scheduled commercial bank was and chief executive Chandra political harmony for rendra Modi has repeatedly de- who converged on the city on banking operation on October 1. inaugurated by Finance Minister Shekhar Ghosh said. It will contin- clared that for further growth of Sunday to be part of the maiden Competition will be intense in Arun Jaitley on Sunday. ue to cater to the unorganized sec- driving economic India, the growth of eastern birth of a bank from a micro- banking with RBI surprising ev- “It is a landmark initiative in the tor like daily wage earners and states is important. West Bengal, lending company. eryone by offering 11 in-princi- service of country and state,” Jait- women running small businesses growth in the state which is known as the cradle of The formation of Bandhan ple licences to set up payments ley said. “It is these entrepreneurs, — the segments that had been its scientists, economists, academi- Bank in fact, marked a new be- banks. The regulator will an- many of them in unorganised sec- borrowers for a decade. cians, authors and writers, is now ginning of Indian banking, nounce the name of small fi- tor, who form the backbone of Indi- Reserve Bank of India has turned Our Bureau creating the Bangla entrepre- which in another one-and-a-half nance banks licensees next an economy.” According to the fi- liberal in doling out banking li- neur. “I think this beginning is al- years will see emergence of pay- month. “This is a very exciting nance minister, small entrepre- cences to entities of different capa- Kolkata: The creation of Band- so important in terms of the re- ments banks and small finance launch. India is changing not on- neurs — from shopkeepers to bilities. It has just issued 11 in- han Bank marks the return of en- turn of entrepreneurship to the bank. Reserve Bank of India has ly on the top, but also on the bot- hawkers — are generating almost principle licences to set up pay- trepreneurship in Bengal and state of West Bengal, which was decided to offer licences to enti- tom-end,” World Bank country 11-12 crore jobs while the large or- ments banks last week and will this would lead West Bengal to the otherwise fleeing from the state. If ties with different capabilities director for India Onno Ruhl ganised industry is able to gener- announce name of small finance path of progress, Union Finance this were to happen, I am sure the with a single agenda in mind: im- said. “It’s an experiment all of us ate only a small fraction of it. “We banks licensees next month. Minister Arun Jaitley said on state would be on a great path to prove financial penetration. are following keenly,” BSE’s ma- are in the second phase of finan- IDFC Bank, which also got a li- Sunday. “A great institution is be- Union Finance Minister Arun progress.” “India is home to several exper- naging director and chief exec- cial inclusion after Jan Dhan Yoja- cence along with Bandhan last ing born in West Bengal,” Jaitley Jaitley addresses the gathering. Bandhan Bank is the first bank iments and an MFI turning into utive Ashishkumar Chauhan na,” Jaitley said. “The banking is year, will begin its journey on Oc- said. “The most important thing set up by a local entrepreneur af- a bank is one such experiment,” said. going far beyond brick and mortar tober 1. “We will pass on the bene- is the birth of a Bangla entrepre- “The party to which I belong ter Independence. Uco Bank, the former RBI deputy governor Microfinance Institutions Net- branches with business correspo- fits of lower cost to our borrowers neur, which is of utmost impor- (BJP) and the party which rules last one to be set up in Kolkata, Shyamala Gopinath said at pre- work chief executive Ratna ndences working in the villages. as we start raising deposits,” tant for the revival and growth of West Bengal (TMC) are strongly was founded by Ghanshyam Das launch event on the eve of Band- Vishwanathan said that Band- Expansion of this segment, along Ghosh said. It has raised `. 80 crore fundamentals of West Bengal,” opposed to each other and that Birla in 1943. State Bank of India, han’s inauguration on Sunday. han Bank was a culmination of with the initiatives to set up 11 new worth of deposits the first day. he said after inaugurating the probably will continue. But in the country’s largest lender also “Bandhan Bank is the first to be hard work and a dream. “It's en- payments banks, will help people The company has 67 lakh micro fi- country’s first private bank in 11 terms of development of this traces its history to the formation off the block as the new change try to the universal bank space get rid of unreliable institutions.” nance borrowers and their accou- years. country and the state, the politics of Bank of Calcutta in 1806, mak- is happening in the country's fi- augurs well for the formal finan- He was referring to the pyramid nts have been transferred to the Underscoring the importance of will not matter and we will fully ing it the oldest commercial bank nance and banking field,” Uday cial service providers who lend schemes run by money circulating new entity, creating a `. 10,240-crore economic activity in eastern cooperate in the development and in the subcontinent. Prince Dwa- Kotak, executive vice chairman to vulnerable and underserved firms such as Saradha, which had strong loan portfolio to start with. states, Jaitley said that political growth of the state of West Ben- rakanath Tagore, grandfather of and managing director of Kotak populations because of Mr Gh- mushroomed in the eastern re- Its net worth is `. 3052 crore and ex- differences between Bharatiya gal,” Jaitley said, terming his Rabindranath Tagore, was an en- Mahindra Bank, said at the osh’s deep understanding of the gion, in the absence of robust isting shareholders like IFC and Janata Party and the Trinamool stance as “a break from some of trepreneur and had founded event. credit needs of this sector.” banking penetration. Bandhan Singapore sovereign wealth fund Congress would not block the way the obsolete policies of the past Union Bank in Calcutta in 1829. West Bengal finance cum in- Bank, which started off with 501 GIC are likely to invest `. 500 crore. of development of West Bengal. and the realisation of the poten- The bank, however, failed in 1848. dustry minister Amit Mitra, Photos: Subhajit Pal Micromax May Now, SBI Chairman Joins the Startup Gold Rush Unveil Its Own jor technology shift in the financial ed Novopay, business expense have personally invited a few of these nancial services, healthcare and re- services landscape. management solution provider Hap- guys for demonstrations at our office tail. Many large traditional financial Nation’s biggest lender Last month, SBI Chairman Arund- pay, online financial services plat- for a larger group of audiences,” said services giants such as SBI are facing Operating System aims to catch up hati Bhattacharya sat in the front form Vote4Cash, financial research Mahapatra. disruption from the rise of new-age rows of a startup session in the city, firm Probe Equity and online lending A number of old-worldly Indian con- payments banks, mobile wallets and ever, the company doesn’t with tech-savvy rivals listening to how disruptive technolo- platform Capital Float. glomerates are now launching corpo- digital currencies such as Bitcoin. Gulveen.Aulakh want to alienate its set of gies and fledgling ventures are taking “We were surprised to see how these rate accelerator programmes and in- “The rise of smartphones, payment @timesgroup.com consumers and develop- over the financial services industry. people are developing/ working on cubators to leverage the potential of bank licences from RBI, unified pay- ers, majority of who are Pankaj Mishra & Anirban Sen India’s largest conglomerates and technologies to solve some of the startups. ment interface from the National New Delhi: Micromax is on Android, by building other corporates are flying in to Ben- problems we didn’t even know exist- Last week, the Aditya Birla Group Payment Corporation of India, the set to go the Xiaomi, Micro- an operating system from Bengaluru: State Bank of India is galuru to get a sense of the startup ed. It was very interesting to see how launched an incubator-like initiative huge amount of global capital com- soft and Samsung way. The the ground up. The No. 2 joining the ranks of large corporates world. point-solutions by startups have the called Bizlabs to collaborate with ing into the payment industry will all homegrown company is de- handset brand in India, starting to tap into Bengaluru’s fer- A dozen startups pitched before an potential to impact the banking in- startups. ET had reported earlier in lead to disruption,” Infosys cofoun- veloping its own operating which closed fiscal 2015 tile startup ecosystem and engage SBI team, which included two of the dustry.” SBI Chief Information Offi- August that the Aditya Birla Group der and former chairman of the Uni- system as well as a suite of with `. 11,000 crore of reve- with early-stage firms, as the nation’s lender’s board members. These star- cer Mrutyunjay Mahapatra said in an was setting up a dedicated fund for in- que Identification Authority Nandan services and apps which w- nue, sells about 3 million biggest lender aims to catch up with tups included payment solutions pro- email to ET. “In fact, we were so im- vesting between $2 million and $10 Nilekani told ET in an interview last ill run across its phones, t- phones a month, two- new-age, tech-savvy rivals amid a ma- vider enStage, Khosla Labs-incubat- pressed by the overall concept that we million in disruptive ideas across fi- week. ablets, televisions and wea- thirds of which are smart- rables, as it goes up the va- phones, and has a 16.7% s- lue chain to differentiate it- hare of smartphones and self from increasing com- 14.4% share overall devi- petition. ces in the local market as Spearheaded by former A- per Counterpoint Resear- mazon executive Ashish A- ch. grawal, who is the new tech- It is No. 3 in the tablet seg- nology head at Micromax, ment with a 9% share for the OS will be a forked An- the quarter ended March droid – a platform developed 2015, according to Cyber- on Google’s open source mo- media Research, trailing bile OS. The first smart- Samsung and Datawind. phones with the new OS will Jain said M- be available by the end of icromax is this financial year and they among the will be affordably priced, top five play- Micromax cofounder Vikas ers in the In- Jain told ET. dian televi- “We’re excellent with part- Operating sion market nerships and we don’t want System with an 8% to reinvent the wheel,” Jain meant to share, sell- said, while specifying that work across ing about the company was not break- platforms 70,000 units ing away from Android but likely to be a month. was working with the glob- available by Jain said the ally dominant Android OS FY16-end first ‘smart- to bring a differentiated ex- non-mobile device’ from perience to consumers the company stable would across all platforms, includ- hit the retail market by the ing wearables. end of the year. Agrawal said the likes of Despite its strong per- Apple, Microsoft and Xia- formance in the smart- omi, which have their own phone and other product OS across platforms, are segments, the company’s translating what they ha- future growth would have ve done internationally to to come from services India. In contrast, Micro- built on top of its products max is closer to the Indian to ensure customer sticki- consumer and therefore ness and brand loyalty – a has a better understandi- difficult feat given Indian ng of the local market and users’ discerning and val- insights based on which it ue-for-money profile. will build the customer Over past year, Micro- experience. max tied up with Cynogen “Our (Indian) use cases for using its OS on Yu are much different from a brand of smartphones th- US or Chinese customer,” rough a wholly-owned su- he said. As hardware is be- bsidiary. The company ha- coming a commodity, Mi- s also begun investing in cromax wants to start in- startups that build servic- vesting in software to es which can be integrat- differentiate itself. How- ed into devices.