The harsh reality in India is that of its 660,000 cities, towns or villages with a population of 1000 or more, only 5% have a commercial bank branch. While there may be 900 million mobile phones operating in a population of 1.2 billion people, Anand Sinha, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, says that India is largely underbanked. Only 13% of the population has a debit card. For credit cards that number shrinks to just 2%. India's banking base remains alarmingly low.
Non-urban India accounts for more than 70% of the country's population, and it is these people that represent “the largest banking opportunity in the world”, according to Uday Kotak, managing director of Kotak Mahindra Bank.
