With more than 10 million customers today – up from 100,000 five years ago – and one of the fastest-growing retail businesses in the country, ICICI Bank has India's public sector banks and foreign banks such as Citigroup and HSBC panting to keep up.
In April 2001, Ms Kochhar became executive director in charge of retail banking, a key driver for the bank’s future growth. Seasoned industry watchers say she is being groomed to become chief executive when CEO and managing director K V Kamath steps down.
She has gained rich experience in the two decades she has spent at the bank, starting at the old ICICI, the parent of ICICI Bank, then as part of the core group that set up the commercial bank in the early 1990s. There she set up the credit division, before being given the challenge of building the bank’s retail business. The cost accountant and management graduate from Jamnalal Bajaj, a top Indian business school, cut prices sharply on consumer loans by reining in operating costs, a winning strategy so far.
Ms Kochhar is young and is in the right place. That gives her a good chance to make it as CEO.
Risks: Foreign investors own more than 70% of the New York Stock Exchange listed bank, and they might want someone from outside the bank as CEO (Mr Kamath, for example, came to ICICI in 1996 from the Asian Development Bank). From within ICICI, Nachiket Mor, an executive director who heads corporate banking, could also be a possible rival.
