Chief Information Officer & Group Head of IT, Hdfc Bank
Search every verified Ramesh Lakshminarayanan interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, CIO and Group Head of IT at HDFC Bank, has discussed the bank's digital transformation and customer engagement strategy in recent appearances. In a June 2025 conversation, he stated that the bank's digital acquisition rate is upwards of 95-96%, with payment-related servicing at 97-98%. He noted that overall digital servicing stands at about 80% and said the bank aims to raise that figure to 90-95%. Lakshminarayanan emphasized that digital banking includes both assisted and unassisted modes, comparing the process to a security guard helping a first-time ATM user or a granddaughter teaching a grandfather to use a mobile app. He also said that user experience must be designed for both urban and rural customers, cautioning that a "very good looking app" may not suit a rural user. In a 2022 discussion, Lakshminarayanan described the bank's technology modernization efforts, including rebuilding and rewriting its mobile app using new tech stacks such as Golang and partnering with firms like Google and Aerospike. He said the bank signed an agreement with Microsoft to build a large enterprise data lake on Azure, which he described as the foundation for analytics and personalization. Lakshminarayanan characterized the bank's data strategy as moving from monolithic on-premises data warehouses to cloud data lakes, followed by API-fication and an AI/ML overlay, which he called the "holy grail." He also noted that the bank is modernizing its existing stack while simultaneously building new digital platforms on a completely new architecture.
“If you see on the acquisition side we are upwards of 95 to 96%, pretty much very close to 100% kind of a digital acquisition. On the servicing side, on the payment side, we probably have 97 to 98% because the payments in India have been disrupted so badly, everybody is digitally doing services about 80%, and that's whe...”
“Digital doesn't mean only unassisted mode. More and more, it's not assisted models are also there because in life, when you go to the ATM for the first time, you will find the security guard actually assisting you. When a grandfather buys a new mobile app, you will always find the granddaughter teaching that person. Th...”
“There are two, three things that drive the digital experience. One is the user experience because you have to start thinking like a modern age fintech, and it need not be only urban centric. Sometimes we mistake it by saying a very good looking app is enough, but the experience for a rural guy might be very different.”
“If you take an unweighted average across most of the transactions, anywhere between 20–25% of the transactions of the larger economy actually flow through our network.”
“UPI being an example — the kind of retail asset dispersal transactions and the card volume transactions both on the issuing side and the acceptance side are just examples of the kind of volume throughputs which you go through.”
“Given that we are a running bank we had a task of looking at the existing stack and we chose to go the modernization route of the existing stack; simultaneously the second part of our transformation journey is about building new capabilities, practices and also building new digital platforms which are ground-up on a co...”
“Page app 2.0 is a completely reimagined UI/UX experience — part of that transformation is that it is built on a new digital, ground-up cloud-ready, cloud-native, containerized stack which therefore factors in nimble agile product changes on the fly and, of course, scalability at the front.”
“The smarter merchant app can scan a Paytm QR or a GPay QR and still initiate a payment; it accepts cards, it accepts remote payments, wallet payments — all interoperable.”
“Part of our strategy is very simple: enter into the merchant acceptance space through payments, get the liability relationship, use the velocity of transactions and the balances which the merchant displays and therefore underwrite loans — small tickets like dukandar loans, business loans, card-on-card loans, all availa...”
“We're rebuilding and rewriting our entire mobile app — not just front end; we're moving deeper into new tech stacks, changing from Java-based systems to Golang, and partnering with firms like Google and Aerospike to get the performance and scale we need.”
“Because of the mapper which is now available through NPCI it is possible that the recipient is not with Payzapp — the recipient could be on any of the PSP apps like PhonePe or Google Pay; I'm able to send money to that person.”
“We just signed up with Microsoft on a very large enterprise data lake — we're moving all our data to the Azure cloud and building a cloud data platform as the foundation for analytics and personalization.”
“Banks had a very poor data strategy — moving from monolithic on-prem data warehouses to cloud data lakes, then API-fying the data and finally applying AI/ML on top; API-fication of the data platform and an AI/ML overlay is the 'holy grail'.”
"Banking is moving to where the customer is." At Leadership ConneX, Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, CIO & Group Head – IT at ...
Payments Business, Tech & Digital | Mr. Parag Rao, Mr. Anjani Rathor, Mr. Ramesh Lakshminarayanan
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