The stars of India’s financial markets
Uday Kotak: a visionary leader
 |
| "We understand the lie of the land better than any global player. We are India" |
UDAY KOTAK IS a rich man. His fortune is $2.2 billion, according to Forbes, making him one of the world’s wealthiest Indians. Kotak has accumulated this wealth not in the sexy and fast-growing areas of technology and telecoms but in the staid and tightly controlled field of Indian banking. His firm, Kotak Mahindra, in which he and other promoters hold a 55% stake, is one of the country’s leading private-sector financial institutions.
Founded in 1985 and originally called Kotak Capital Management Finance, the firm started life as a trade finance boutique. It had just two employees.
More than 20 years later, Kotak Mahindra is involved in every aspect of Indian financial services from commercial banking, to stockbroking, to mutual funds, to life insurance, to investment banking, to private equity, to real estate. Now it employs more than 12,300 people, 4,500 of whom were added over the past 12 months.