Author
Tamale Bandyopadhyaya
Editor
Jaico Books
Price
Rs 395/-
Pages
372
ISBN
978-81-8495-396-1
I am sure that many will remember those days when Bank employees, from tellers to managers, were in high demand on the marriage market. The girl’s father always appreciated having a banker as a son-in-law who gave the person status and dignity. Technology and product innovation were unheard of in those days.
“A bank for the dollar”is the story of the birth and growth of HDFC Bank, which turned eighteen in August 2012. There are many things one can do when turning eighteen and it varies greatly from country to country. In India, one can vote and get a license to drive a car, but one cannot drink in public places. But in China, turning eighteen gives you license to drink. In the odyssey of the last eighteen years, the book attempts to show whether life turned out to be different for the bank’s employees, customers and investors.
The entire journey of eighteen years has been covered by the author as a story that spans thirteen chapters. By writing it as a story, the author has kept it interesting by engaging the readers. The objective was not simply to present the history of the bank, but to tell a story about the creation of this successful bank in India.
Author, Tamal Bandyopadhyayis one of the most respected business journalists in India. His weekly column, Banker’s Trust, in the Mint, India’s second-largest financial daily, where he is deputy editor, is widely read for his deep insights into the world of finance and his unerring ability to anticipate major political moves.
Tamal has kept a close eye on the financial sector for more than fifteen years and has had a front-row view of the huge changes in Indian finance during this period. He has been a frequent speaker at seminars across India and has hosted a very successful weekly show (with the same name as his weekly column) on television, featuring some of India’s most respected bankers, legislators, central bankers and regulators. India.
He has contributed to The Oxford Companion to Economics in India, edited by Kaushik Basu and published by Oxford University Press in 2007. Banker’s Trust, an anthology of his weekly Mint column, has recently been published. This is Tamal’s first book.
The journey starts from when different names like Bank of Bombay (BoB) or Bombay International Bank were suggested before finally being established with the name HDFC Bank. The Bank of Bombay acronym collided with the established public sector bank, Bank of Baroda, and that was dropped.
The first four chapters talk about the creation of the bank, how it was conceptualized, how the core team was formed. The next four chapters discuss the bank’s business philosophy and how it differs from the rest of the pack. Chapters nine and ten talk about mergers. Chapter eleven details what went wrong with the bank and how it got into trouble. Chapter twelve delves into the story of what makes Aditya Puri the longest-serving CEO of any bank in India. The last chapter tells readers the story of why this bank is successful.
Looking at today’s ride, it would be hard for many to believe that in the early days the training sessions were held on the bench under a tree in a textile factory complex in central Mumbai. It was also not an easy task for Chairman Deepak Parekh to bring each member of the core team to a common level of understanding.
The book is not only intended for new gamblers or bankers but would be a valuable story for business school students to learn how such a bank can be established in India. The author has kept it interesting by maintaining an informal style of telling the stories. To expand on his thoughts for his first book, we learned that the author left Mumbai and went to Goa for about two months for privacy leaving his family behind. He ended up writing for almost 16 hours a day and the end result was an excellent read. “A bank for the dollar”.