Chairman, State Bank of India
Watch SBI Chairman, Shri Challa Sreenivasulu Setty
Watch SBI Chairman, Shri Challa Sreenivasulu Setty, deliver the Keynote Address at the Citi India Conference 2026, held on 3rd June 2026 at the Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai, where he shared his insights on India’s growth story.
#SBI #TheBankerToEveryIndian #CitiIndiaConference2026 #IndiasGrowthStory #VisionIndia2047
About Challa Setty
Challa Sreenivasulu Setty, Chairman of the State Bank of India, has been active in several public engagements in mid-2026. On July 21, he commented on the listing of SBI Funds Management, calling it the largest IPO of 2026. He stated that the bank's focus remains on core deposit mobilization and lending, and that SBI would continue to sell its own subsidiary products rather than competing products. At the TransUnion CIBIL Credit Conference on July 13, Setty delivered a special address on credit and resilience, arguing that financial systems falter when resilience fails to keep pace with ambition and that buffers must be built before they are required. He identified four pillars for resilient growth: strong capitalization, forward-looking risk management, data-driven early warning systems, and balanced credit portfolios. In June, Setty spoke at the Citi India Conference 2026, where he discussed India's growth story and the role of banking in achieving the Vision 2047 goals. He said that India may require incremental investments of nearly 200 trillion rupees by 2030 and another 400 to 450 trillion rupees by FY35 across infrastructure, manufacturing, energy transition, and other sectors. He described the banking sector as central to this transformation, acting as mobilizers of savings, enablers of entrepreneurship, and allocators of capital. Regarding the YONO app, Setty noted that it had crossed 4.5 crore active users and that the bank was considering commercializing elements of the platform for other banks. On the RBI's monetary policy, he stated that the house view expected a pause, and he expressed concern that inflationary expectations could moderate consumption, which he described as a key driver of the domestic economy.
Transcript (29 segments)
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Host0:08
I would now like to invite on stage our keynote speaker for the day, Mr. CS Setty, Chairman of the State Bank of India, a distinguished leader and a career SBI veteran with over three decades of leadership across key banking verticals whose vision has been instrumental in shaping the evolution of modern banking in India, as he sheds light on the role of banking in driving India's growth story for the 2047 vision. We would request you all to kindly keep sharing your questions through Slido, which would be taken up by Mr. Setty at the end of his session. And moderating that Q&A we will have Anuradha Chadda, Head of Financial Institutions Business at Citi India. Over to you, Mr. Setty.
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Challa Setty0:57
Good morning everyone. You are able to hear me? Thank you. I'm inspired by Amul. I thought I'll say a few words before I go to my written speech. First of all, thanks Citi for giving me this opportunity. We have a very strong relationship with Citi across the globe. We operate out of 29 different countries, and everywhere we operate, Citi is a significant partner to us in terms of a range of banking services which we provide to our customers.
But before we speak about the banking role in Viksit Bharat, a couple of things I wanted to share with you. In my introduction about me, she mentioned about three decades. I'm moving towards four decades actually. It is 37 years in SBI. It is very interesting to see this 37-year journey. Where we started, sometime in 1988, I joined the bank December 1988, quite some time ago. And the journey of this 37 years is also a tremendous journey for the banking industry in the country.
A few anecdotes which I would like to share. In 1988, when we joined SBI, Indian banking was dominated completely by the public sector banks. Virtually no private sector banks in the country. And the Government of India through the RBI wanted to implement computerization. They didn't call it computerization. They called it mechanization. They wanted to bring machines in the banking industry. And every employee union association pushed back that we don't want machines.
And very typical Indian jugaad, what the government has done is that they have given a computer increment. Anybody who uses a computer will get an increment. So all of us, of course, got the increment. And the story of computerization of India and banking in particular and payments in general is an amazing story, right, where you started in 1988 and where we are today.
Similarly, sometime later, four or five years later, I was a branch manager in one of the small branches. I remember having, you know, in India the districts are headed by collectors, they are the district administrator. In one of the days, one collector walked into my office and said that I want 20,000 rupees clean overdraft. He didn't have, I need to pay a fee to my son's education and my account is elsewhere. So I need some money here. I told him, sir, there is no clean overdraft facility. I can't give any clean unless you have a deposit with me, you won't get a loan.
And then five years later, just before the liberalization began in India, we were taking 400% cash collateral to open a letter of credit to import anything into India. So this is where we all started, maybe 30, 35 years ago. Today everyone is chasing a retail customer to give a loan. Everyone is chasing a business to give a seamless term loan. Everyone is changing every particular segment, whether it is microfinance, whether it is MSME, whether it's corporate banking. And the banking has definitely played an important role the way the country has progressed over the last three to four decades of my journey in SBI.
I thought I'll set the context from there, and let us see what exactly the Viksit Bharat and the banking role is going to play. So first of all, again very good morning to all of you. As I said, it's a privilege and pleasure to be here today at the Citi India conference. I didn't expect to be such a massive gathering, but I think I must compliment Citi to organize such a wonderful event.
And as Amul mentioned, I think it's a time when the whole global economy is navigating geopolitical uncertainties, shifting supply chains, technological disruption, and changing patterns of capital flows. I thought I've seen everything, but every year brings new dimensions of challenges. But India stands out as a source of stability, resilience, and opportunity. Don't look at Sensex. Look at India as a long-term story. I think that is what I'm going to talk about now.
That Vision India 2047. You are all familiar with what we talk about. 2047 essentially is 100 years of independent India, and where India aspires to become Viksit Bharat, the developed country, and provide at least improved per capita income to $10,000 and be called a developed country. So India's story is no longer merely about catching up. As I said in the context, it is actually emerging as one of the defining growth stories of the 21st century. Increasingly, it is helping shape the global future.
Over the last two decades, living standards have more than tripled with the GDP per capita increasing to $2,700. It is still low, but it increased from $800 in 2006. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. I think it's very, very significant.
When I was a child in school, we used to get wheat in a government school under the scheme called PL480. We all used to wait for that wheat because that used to give the midday meal to many of the students, millions of students those days. Today I'm very proud to say that India is surplus in food grain production. And India has established itself as the fastest-growing major economy in the world. But the most remarkable aspect of India's rise is not simply the pace of growth. It is the ability to deliver transformation at an unprecedented scale.
And throughout this journey, the banking sector has been far more than a provider of financial services. It has been a critical partner in nation-building. The most distinctive feature of India's developmental journey has been the creation of a world-leading digital public infrastructure. I think you're all familiar with the DPI, the JAM trinity. They've been spoken about quite a lot, but the digital prowess what India has developed, particularly in the payment space, is amazing. And you must have read extensively that today UPI handles 200 billion transactions every year. And I'm very proud to say that SBI handles 30% of that volume.
If you see the volume of transactions and the capacity what the system has developed, SBI alone handles almost 250 million transactions every day on UPI, and with a technical decline as low as 0.1%. So you need to build in India. If you are operating, you have to build for scale and build scale which actually creates the flywheel impact going forward. So the JAM trinity definitely helped in terms of creating foundation for one of the most ambitious digital transformations in modern history. Banks have played a central role in translating this digital infrastructure to economic opportunity.
Social security coverage expanded dramatically from 19% of the population in 2015 to over 64% in 2025. The bedrock of this is what is called Direct Benefit Transfer, which has not only prevented leakage, it has brought many people into the fold of the benefits what the government has been giving to them. And again, the digital public infrastructure played a very important role to ensure that the DBT is delivered with efficiency and low cost.
One of the most other significant achievements in the Indian banking system has been the democratization of access to finance. This DPI and the whole gamut of data availability in India has ensured that access to finance, the story which I mentioned, is no more relevant. Not only the collector, everyone in India has access to finance today. The microfinance sector offers a compelling example. Today 95% of microfinance borrowers are women and nearly 80% belong to rural areas. Over the last decade, the number of active borrowers has increased from 33 million to nearly 63 million. During the same period, the sector's loan portfolio expanded almost sevenfold, reaching approximately 2.5 trillion rupees.
So these numbers represent much more than credit growth. They represent women starting businesses, families improving housing conditions, children gaining access to better education, and households becoming more resilient. Few financial inclusion initiatives in the world have combined financial access, social empowerment, and women-led development at this scale.
Banks also have played a transformative role in supporting entrepreneurship. Today, large-scale government-supported, non-government-supported, individually driven by the banks are immense. We have adopted digitalization at scale to ensure that term financing becomes seamless in the country. Consolidated MSME credit outstanding is around 67 trillion rupees, growing at a 5-year CAGR of 17%.
The other pillar of India's transformation has been the infrastructure and productive capacity creation. Over the last decade, India has undertaken one of the world's largest infrastructure expansion programs. National highways have expanded from about 91,000 kilometers in 2014 to over 1,46,000 kilometers today. Similarly, India's metro rail network, port capacity, Indian railways network, and airport connectivity have grown manifold.
Behind every highway, airport, logistics corridor, metro rail system, and renewable energy project lies a financing story. Indian banks have been central participants in that story. Infrastructure lending by scheduled commercial banks increased approximately from 9.6 trillion rupees in 2016 to nearly 14 trillion rupees in 2026. Agriculture too has benefited from expanding institutional finance. Agricultural credit disbursement crossed 26 trillion rupees in FY26. Since inception, over 860 million applications have been processed under the Prime Minister's Crop Insurance Program.
But when we talk about the next frontier, Vision India 2047, the next phase of India's development journey must focus on some key priorities. First, rural prosperity. Nearly 60% of India's population continues to reside in rural areas. Future growth must strengthen agri-business productivity, improve market access, expand access to finance, and build climate resilience.
Second, urban transformation. India's urban population is expected to approach 800 million by 2050. Building sustainable and globally competitive cities will require significant investments in transport, housing, water, waste management, and urban infrastructure. Third, investing in people. India's median age is around 28 years. By 2050, the country's working-age population is expected to exceed 1.1 billion people. Investments in education, healthcare, skilling, and female workforce participation will determine whether India fully realizes its demographic dividend.
Fourth, globally competitive manufacturing. India seeks to increase manufacturing share of GDP from around 17% currently to at least 25%, deepen integration with global value chains, and emerge as a leader in advanced manufacturing sectors. The vision is ambitious, but India is not attempting it from a standing start. The country enters this next phase with strong macroeconomic fundamentals, world-class digital infrastructure, expanding physical infrastructure, and a resilient banking system.
Having said that, if banking helped build the foundations of modern India, it must now help build the foundations of Viksit Bharat. The scale of financing required over the coming decades will be unprecedented. Based on internal assessments, India may require incremental investments of nearly 200 trillion rupees by 2030, another 400 to 450 trillion rupees by FY35 across infrastructure, manufacturing, energy transition, urban development, MSMEs, and innovation.
For banks to support India's aspirations, they themselves must evolve. The future banking model must be built on some key pillars: ensuring access to banking services across every segment of society and the economy; building institutional expertise, financial awareness, and deeper understanding of evolving customer needs; leveraging technology, data, and artificial intelligence to create superior customer experiences and new business models; integrating environmental, social, and governance considerations into financing decisions and operations; maintaining the highest standards of governance, consumer protection, and risk management.
Green finance will become another defining opportunity. As per NITI Aayog estimates, India's energy transition will require a cumulative investment of approximately $22 trillion by 2070 to achieve its economy-wide net-zero target. Programs such as PM Surya Ghar is a very successful program where rooftop solar was installed, which has already covered nearly 4 million households and created almost 12 gigawatt capacity, demonstrating both the scale of ambition and the financing opportunity ahead.
In fact, renewable energy now meets over 50% of India's electricity demand, a milestone which has been achieved five years ahead of the 2030 target under the Paris Agreement.
The global economic order is being rewritten in real time. Supply chains are shifting. Manufacturing is being reconfigured. Technology is redefining productivity. New growth centers are emerging. India enters this period from a position of strength: a young population, a rapidly expanding economy, world-class digital public infrastructure, modernizing physical infrastructure, growing manufacturing capabilities, and a resilient financial system.
So the journey to Vision India 2047 will undoubtedly be challenging, but it is also one of the most compelling growth stories of our time. India has already demonstrated how inclusion can be achieved at scale. The next chapter is to demonstrate how inclusion can be transformed into prosperity at scale. The banking sector will be at the heart of the transformation, not merely as providers of credit, but as mobilizers of savings, enablers of entrepreneurship, allocators of capital, and partners in nation-building. The story of India's rise and the story of Indian banking have been deeply intertwined, and as India moves towards 2047, they will continue to be written together. Thank you, and Jai Hind. I'll take a few questions.