'My goal is to build a younger, leaner, hungrier kind of Kotak Bank'

As January approaches, Ashok Vaswani will begin his third year as managing director and chief executive of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.

- Shayan Ghosh, Satish John & Ravi Krishnan

Soon after Vaswani joined the bank, it had to start untangling itself for regulatory crosshairs. Since then, the RBl-imposed embargo on enlisting more digital customers has been lifted, it has made a couple of acquisitions, and is now in the race to acquire a big one, but Vaswani unsurprisingly sidesteps talk of IDBI Bank. The presence of Uday Kotak, the promoter, on the board has helped him cushion the impact of the superannuations/resignations of a few senior colleagues, with Vaswani saying his ‘goal is to build a younger, leaner, hungrier kind of Kotak.”

Edited excerpts:

A lot of foreign capital is entering Indian banking and NBFCs. Does it give you sleepless nights on account of more competition?

It definitely does not give sleepless nights. By the time I go home in the evening, lam sotired, Isleep very, very well. Look, competitionis welcome, and these are chunky buys, but thereisenough foreign shareholding inall banks, including ours. Increased competition only benefits the customer. Having said that, we are now seeing banks from the Gulf and Japan enter the marketplace, while you are seeing the Europeansand Americans leave the shores.

This January, you will be completing two years. In terms of the mandate and all the things thatyouhave accomplished, howdoyou look back?