Consulting | Training | Staff Training | Placement Services

MEN OF STEEL

Objective

To share the life story of successful Indian entrepreneur

About UDAY KOTAK

Birth date:15th March, 1959

Birth place: Mumbai,India

Occupation: Vice Chairman, MD, KotakMahindra

Net worth:$3.2 billion

Professional Profile

• Uday Kotak is the Vice Chairman and theManaging Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank.He is a self made Indian Business man.

• In less than two decades he has not onlymade a prodigious fortune but has alsocreated a brand name in the banking andinvestment industry.

• Uday must never have imagined that, in undertwenty years, Uday’s company would have amarket cap of Rs 6,700 crore.

• Presently, Kotak Mahindra Bank is the 3rdlargest private sector bank in India.

”If You Had Put Rs 1 Lakh Into Uday’sBusiness, Your Stake Would Be Worth Rs100 Crore Today”

Cricket and Calculus

• Family Background (traditional Gujarati cotton traders)

• Schooling- Hindi Vidya Bhavan on Marine Drive

• When he was at school,Uday discovered that he hadtwo great talents.

• The first was cricket – he eventually became captain ofthe school team and went on to play in the KangaLeague when he joined college.

• But it was the second talent that was todetermine the course of his life. He wasn’t justgood at math, he seemed to have a specialrelationship with figures. Numbers spoke tohim.

• Bachelor's Degree: get into Sydenham for afour year B.Com course, He topped theuniversity.

• After Bachelor degree the logical thing forhim to have done was to join the familybusiness, but he decided that he wanted anMBA first

• Post graduation in management studies in1982: Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of ManagementStudies

Brush with death

• September 1979, he was playing cricket in theKanga League……

• The doctors told his parents that he had had abrain hemorrhage and that there was nohope. Nevertheless, they operated instantly.

• Against the odds, Uday survived, butbecause he took a while to recover from theoperation, he missed a semester at Bajaj

• He began going to the office of the family businessin the Navsari building in the Fort.

• It was not a happy experience, though he says thatit was a huge lesson for him.

• ‘ For every decision, I had to deal with fourteenfamily members and the one thing it taught me wasto never do business with family.

• We have 5,000 employees at Kotak today and notone of them is related to me.’

Opportunity comes calling

• Get office space of 300 square feet within theNavsari building premises

• banks gave depositors a 6 per cent return ontheir money. But if a company went to thesame bank to borrow funds, the bankscharged an interest of 16.5 per cent.

• there was money to be made by anybody whocould find a way of reducing this spread.

• It was around this time that he met somebodywho handled finance for Nelco, the Tataelectronics company

• Nelco needed working capital and Uday thoughtthat this presented an opportunity.

• From these relatively straightforwardtransactions, Uday advanced into bill discounting,using the same principles. Next, he spottedanother opportunity.

• it was a profitable business and he was soonmaking a few lakhs a year

• He sensed that he needed to expand anddoubled his staff from three to six. The problemwas that the size of the office remained thesame, so he hit on an ingenious solution: ‘Wedoubled the working area by cutting all thedesks in half.’

The Mahindra magic

• Uday Kotak thinks that 1985 was probably one ofthe most significant years.

• it was the year that Anand Mahindra, whom hedealt with while arranging funds for MahindraUgine, told him that he would invest in anybusiness that Uday wanted to start.

• Anand had just come back from business school inthe US and he understood that the financialservices revolution was certain to hit India

• In early 1986, when the business took shape

• Uday remembers. ‘ And with Anand on board, we were ableto call the company Kotak Mahindra like Goldman Sachs orone of the other big Western firms that I admired. And let’sbe honest. The Kotak name meant nothing. But the additionof Mahindra gave the company instant credibility.’

• In 1989-90, Citibank launched the car financing business inIndia. In those days, you had to wait six months or so if youwanted a car unless you were willing to pay a premium.

• Kotak entered the business but offered an added plus. KotakMahindra would buy many cars in its own name, so if youwent to the company for a car loan, not only would you getfinancing but you would also get the car on the spot.

The unsung story

• In 1993, Uday went international. At aEuromoney conference in Delhi, he metpeople from Goldman Sachs.

• Two years later, Goldman Sachs signed a JVwith Kotak for banking and securities

• ‘ All this was important for me,’ says Uday, ‘because till then I had no idea how globalfinancial businesses were managed. Dealingwith Goldman Sachs helped me learn how torun a financial business. It also taught me thatthings were changing very quickly in India –especially after the reforms – and that the oldways of doing business were dead. We had toadopt global norms.’

• In 1998, he launched the Kotak Mutual Fund,

• At Anil Ambani’s wedding, Uday ran into a friendwho had a fixed deposit distribution business thathe wanted to get rid of. Uday bought it off him foraround Rs 50 lakh and got an 800 square feetoffice in Dalal Street as part of the deal. In 1991,Kotak Mahindra got into merchant banking andthe profits were good.

• In December 1991, the company went public andUday felt he was on the road to creating thefinancial services institution he had always dreamtof.

• The rest of the Kotak story reads like a list ofsuccesses. Once Uday had a certain criticalmass, he just kept expanding. By the end ofthe 1990s, he was one of the most respectednames in Indian finance and nearly every bigdeal came to his firm.

• ‘ It’s not the thing with numbers,’ he replies.

• ‘ There are many people who are much better withfigures than I am, even in my own company.

• Whatever I have achieved is due to three things. One:concentrate on substance not form. Two: believe in avalue system, not just in profits. And three: recognize theimportance of process over creativity. Because Indiansare a creative people, we rely on discretion and instinct.But when you’re building an institution, there is nosubstitute for process.

• That’s what all my dealings with foreign companies havetaught me.’

Awards and Accolades

• Uday was awarded with “Most Valuable CEO” overall, 2010 by Business World.

• He has been awarded as “Asian Asset Manager of the year” in 2009.

• GIREM presented Kotak Realty Funds Group with “The Investor of the Year Award”for the year 2009

• He was bestowed with “Innovator of the Year Award” by CNBC TV18 in 2006.

• He was awarded the Ernst and Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Award” in 2003

• Uday was featured as one of the “Global Leaders of Tomorrow” at the worldEconomic Forum's annual meet at Davos.

• He was also earmarked amongst the top financial leaders for the 21st century byEuromoney Magazine.

• He is a member of the Board of Indian Council for Research on InternationalEconomic Affairs, Mahindra United World College of India and the Indian School ofBusiness.

Thank You !

Connect with us:

www.mastermindindia.in | info@Mastermindindia.in

Consulting | Training | Staff Training | Placement Services