A biography for Uday Kotakhasn’t been written yet.
“I am a believer in the journey and enjoying the journey.”
“When I wear the hat of management, it is important that our management behaves and conducts as management accountable to the board.”
“Our view is that younger customers love our digital offering, our mobile banking applications and so on. Older customers expect relationship managers and want much more personal attention in terms of their needs.”
“We encounter very healthy boardroom debates and pretty diverse views, so we have always had the benefit of diversity of opinion and expression before we take some important calls.”
“It's true that I have always been very comfortable with numbers.”
“My view is that at a certain age - and we can debate whether that age is 70-72 or 75 - members need to step off boards. As per the banking guidelines, that age for the director on a board today is 70.”
“There is socialism in the family that conflicts with meritocracy. And that bothered me.”
“For me, the real thing is make, serve and list in India. Which means we need manufacturing, we need services, and we need financial markets.”
“If India grows steadily and does the structural things right and carefully unties knots, builds an institutional process which sort of cleans up the corruption and the baggage in the system, I see it as a wonderful marathon.”
“What we have to be careful is that if we drop interest rates where the rate of interest is lower than inflation, then savers will not put money in financial savings and move it to gold and real estate, which is bad for India.”
“The government should move towards supporting aspirations and not entitlement. Subsidies supporting non-productive growth should be reduced.”
“We are going to position ourselves as a world-class financial institution. We want to do things that are comparable to the best in the world. At the same time, we want to have very strong human qualities.”
“I was not very keen on joining the family business... there were 14 family members working together, and it worried me that I would not have enough individuality.”
“I keep wondering at night, 'Will I have a bank the next morning, or will some technology company be doing banking without needing a bank?'”
“Foreign investors are looking for a consistent and stable policy in India.”
“Culture is about the mindset of people, and we are very happy to have a strong combined mindset of people.”
“A lot of family members worked in the joint commodities family business. It was a classic case of capitalism at work and socialism at home.”
“The ability to scale up is hard. So the best model for us is concentrated India, diversified financial services, and through this, we can get significant scale on an Indian platform.”
“In a marathon, if you run too fast, you get exhausted. If you run too slow, you never make it.”
“A lot of our fiscal deficit went to fund consumption and really did not get used to build investment and infrastructure. The trouble is, you can get a spurt in GDP growth, which may not be sustainable. I would much rather build the gradient of a long-term marathon.”