The Book HDFC Bank 2.0 is written by Tamal Bandyopadhyay, a journalist of over 35 years of experience covering the banking industry.
The Book is divided into 3 parts-it’s digital journey, its origins and the legacy of Aditya Puri.
I found the part of the digital journey to be quite interesting. Its incredible how a large bank like HDFC Bank was able to disrupt itself, instead of letting fintechs do it.
Going digital enable HDFC Bank to offer its customers a wide variety of products with significant lower costs. Digitial transactions now account for a whopping 85% + of overall transactions
One product that HDFC Bank was able to offer its customers was the 10 second loan product…it could do so because of its vastly superior data analytics and risk management processes.
One surprise for me was Aditya Puri asserting that HDFC Bank is the Indian Alibaba. I had always thought that telcos like Jio or Amazon/Flipkart/PayTm would be India’s answer to Alibaba.
But No, Aditya Puri’s motto is that if a customer wants to shop, pay, invest, trade,borrow, the only option in their mind should be HDFC Bank ! The Bank intends to do that via its Smart Buy Platform which clocked 4,000 Cr in 2018.
The second part of the Book is about the origins of the HDFC Bank. This is mostly material from Tamal’s earlier book ‘HDFC Bank: A Bank for the Buck‘
The third part of the Book is Aditya Puri’s legacy.Aditya Puri is the longest serving MD of a Bank globally (25 years) and will step down in 2020. His legacy is that he created a world class bank with great folks and superb governance standards.
I would recommend this Book to those interested in HDFC Bank and India’s banking industry.