In 2010, Ratnakar Bank did the unthinkable,
it purchased of some of Royal Bank of Scotland's India portfolio for an
undisclosed amount, could hardly be described as an old-generation bank.
In 2014, the bank christened itself
as RBL Bank, with a brand new
logo too.
The 2010 deal was driven by a team of
professionals recruited mostly from foreign and other big private banks.
Till 2010, Ratnakar Bank was known
as ‘The Kolhapur-based lender or NH4 Bank’, since a majority of its business comes from
cities in and around the 1,235-kilometer-long National Highway that connects
four of the 10 most populous cities in India from Pune to Chennai,
The new management team was led by Its
chief, Vishwavir Ahuja, is the former CEO of Bank of America's India business;
head of strategy and markets, Rajeev Ahuja, joined from Citi, and head of
corporate and institutional banking, R Gurumurthy, has worked with Standard
Chartered Bank. The senior leadership team also consists of professionals who
have worked with Deutsche Bank, Bharti AXA Life Insurance and YES Bank.
The bank is backed by a host of domestic
and global investors - HDFC, Norwest Venture Partners, Aditya Birla Private
Equity and Samara Capital, to name a few - and is no less aggressive than some
of its new-age counterparts.
The guiding principle of its future plans
will be a strategy called NH4 to NH8. In essence it includes opening new
branches in the hinterland along National Highway 8 and increasing its
footprint outside of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa to the National Capital
Region (NCR), Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh,
Rajasthan and Daman & Diu. Some success has already started coming its way.
The bank's corporate banking revenue from NCR now accounts for almost a third
of its wholesale banking business.
An interesting tag line of RBL Bank is ‘We
offer Point-of-Service facility for KYC compliance - we can come to you!’
