Uday Kotak: Finance is the catalyst

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Fifty years of Asia The profiles: 23 of the biggest names in Asia Zafrul Aziz Laura Cha Wei Sun Christianson Piyush Gupta Reuben Lai Boon Chye Loh Agus Martowardojo Raghuram Rajan Jahja Setiaatmadja Weijian Shan Alan Smith Teh Hong Piow Tian Huiyu Sun Yu Nestor Tan Wee Ee Cheong Kartika Wirjoatmodjo Peter Wong Daniel Wu Wu Wei Joseph Yam Zeti Akhtar Aziz

Kotak Mahindra is a story of evolution. It started out in 1985 as a leasing and broking business, becoming an investment bank in the 2000s and eventually what they call internally ‘bank plus’, a full-service institution.

“We saw a very significant opportunity as India’s economy evolved over the last 30 years, and there was a deep belief that the financial sector in India would go through its own evolution and that there was space for private-sector financial intermediation,” says Uday Kotak, founder and chief executive, looking back to when he set up the institution in the 1980s.