CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank
Uday Kotak On Customer Services & Stock Market Boom In India | Business Today
In an exclusive interview Kotak Mahindra Bank MD & CEO Uday Kotak shares his thoughts about the future of banking services, how to serve a customer and more. He also talks about stock market boom.
#UdayKotak #KotakMahindra #BusinessToday #IndiaToday
Subscribe to India Today for NEW VIDEOS EVERY DAY and make sure to enable Push Notifications so you'll never miss a new video.
All you need to do is PRESS THE BELL ICON next to the Subscribe button!
India Today TV is India's leading English News Channel. India Today YouTube channel offers latest news videos on Politics, Business, Cricket, Bo...
About Uday Kotak
At the CII Annual Business Summit 2026 and other recent events, Uday Kotak warned that India has not yet felt the full economic impact of the West Asia conflict, stating that higher energy prices are "coming big" and that consumers have not yet felt the pressure. He said that existing fuel inventories and oil companies acting as shock absorbers have delayed the transmission, but argued that a shock is imminent unless the conflict stops. Kotak also described the global order as shifting toward a "tribal" mindset focused on territory and control over assets, citing remarks by Donald Trump about war spoils and charging rent for the Strait of Hormuz as evidence of a return to "true colonialism." Kotak argued that India has "financialized too early," with companies overly focused on short-term stock prices and quarterly results rather than long-term investment. He contrasted this with Chinese companies, which he said prioritize R&D and long-term strategic dominance. He also called for a national debate on the role of state-owned enterprises, noting that much of China's growth has come from such companies and that they are "not necessarily the wrong thing." Kotak urged businesses and policymakers to "prepare for paranoia" and be ready for tough times rather than waiting for a shock.
Transcript (6 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
U
Uday Kotak0:00
Do you see a huge threat from all these payment wallets? Because even in the West, the same discourse is playing out. People are asking questions: why not PayPal? Why a bank? Or do you think the whole notion of banking might actually undergo a sea change which we cannot see today? Because these days, the rate of change of technological processes is actually so fast that within two or three years, a long-standing, century-long tradition can be turned on its head. Is there that existential risk which exists for banks today?
I
Interviewer0:35
I think again, don't look at it as banks or non-banks. Look at it as financial intermediation, a way by which a customer's needs of savings, investing, spending, and borrowing are met. If you take that lens and move away from thinking about yourself as this regulated, protected, cushioned institution to an institution which is in the business of service, providing intermediation and a customer experience facility for what a customer needs in day-to-day life, saving, investing, borrowing, spending, and the mechanism of payments is a way to achieve that. Just focus relentlessly on the customer and the customer's needs. It does not matter whether you're a bank or a non-bank. It's about how you do it for that customer and do it relentlessly. I think the opportunity and the scale is huge, and it is going to be a concentrated play. You're not going to have too many players sustain this huge change in the world where, basically, few winners take it all.
U
Uday Kotak1:42
Yeah, winners are indeed taking it all. But you spoke about risk management, and I want to ask you about how important that lesson has been in negotiating the very choppy waters of the COVID-induced times that we live in. How do you think Indian banks will come out of it? Given your own experience with the retail loan book and the SME loan book, what level of impairment you may have seen and what your expectations are on how we'll finally come out of this with what level of non-performing assets.
I
Interviewer2:15
You know, COVID has done a few things in terms of turning things on their head. It has disproportionately separated the larger players and people having access to capital from the smaller players who do not have that easy access to capital. The haves and have-nots have been defined by availability of the capital window. Therefore, even if you are in a stress sector, if you have access to capital, particularly equity capital, you have a much greater chance of surviving. If you don't, the chances are you will find it extremely difficult to sustain through this period, particularly in the stress sectors. The second thing which COVID has done has disproportionately changed the bottom of the pyramid's future a lot. More people have got below what I would call the subsistence levels, and a few people are getting disproportionate concentration. It has very serious implications for the socio-economic, political agenda of the world. The faster businesses, including new and old generation businesses, figure this out, the better it is, or else we will have a very serious challenge to this whole divide which is happening very dramatically in front of our eyes.
U
Uday Kotak3:46
Since you spoke about the state of the economy and the scarring by COVID, what do you make of what is going on in the stock market today? Every week it hits new highs. A lot of people are left scratching their heads, but it just continues to climb higher. Are you a believer in this rise? Are you a skeptic?
I
Interviewer4:03
I am a believer in new pockets of value which are happening in the marketplace and the economy. The tough one is: are the price points high or low? Let me give you one example, and I'm not justifying the present valuations by giving this example. I'm just making a point. I recollect maybe it was 10 years ago or 12 years ago, whenever it was, Facebook getting listed. There was a lot of skepticism around Facebook, and Facebook was listed at a 30 billion valuation. People were saying this is too high, this is crazy, people don't know what they're buying, where is the revenue model? Today Facebook is a trillion-dollar company. So, it's always dangerous to say what is high and what is not. We are seeing certain trends about how a certain level of engagement and interaction with the customer world creates potential revenue streams, some of them not even imagined at the point of time when the model may have been built. The question is that unlike what was true 10 or 15 years ago, we are seeing a lot of players come in at the same time and wanting to get a piece of the action.