Gupta said that the organization sees an opportunity to broaden its business profile to include retail and SME customers, which are dominated by major corporations.
“We are excited about India as it is not only one of the fastest growing markets in the world, but also growing digitally,” the Meerut-born banker told PTI in an interview on Saturday.
He added, “Our strategy in India is to grow through a “physical” model, offering our customers best-in-class digital capabilities, coupled with a robust physical infrastructure to help with last-mile servicing. supported by the network,” he said.
DBS Bank India Limited (DBIL) is merging Lakshmi
(LVB), which was merged with DBS on November 27, 2020 under Section 45 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.
“Our primary focus is to integrate this with our business and grow organically,” Gupta said.
The recent Euromoney award for DBS as the top SME/MSME subsidiary bank is meant to do more for the Indian market.
Gupta said, “We are delighted to be named the ‘World’s Best SME Bank’ by Euromoney for the second time. Since its inception, DBS has been supporting local businesses and expanding credit reach in this segment.”
“Our digital capabilities have helped us serve our customers in all our markets, including India, even during the pandemic. Our suite of digital offerings has helped MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) in India with working capital needs. and has helped in meeting operational liabilities,” underlined the tech-savvy banking giant.
DBS helped MSMEs in India navigate the challenging business environment during the months of lockdown by disbursing credit to the segment.
“We continue to see tremendous opportunities in India’s SME and MME segment,” Gupta said.
“With an expanded footprint, we are further intensifying our efforts in this segment, which includes making banking seamless by working with industry-class digital platforms,” he added,
reserve Bank of IndiaHe said the recent effort to settle international transactions in rupees could be a step towards internationalization of the currency. He said that higher demand for settlement of Indian Rupee (INR) means less demand for foreign exchange for current account transactions.
“In the short term, the weakening of the Indian rupee has caused some concern. However, from different lenses, the currency’s decline this time is more contained and supported by better fundamentals,” Gupta, a Singaporean by naturalization since 2009, pointed out.
“From a policy perspective, with dollar appreciation in a weak risk environment and an imminent domestic balance of payments deficit, the developed equilibrium currency will have to be kept on a gradual depreciation path as an adjustment mechanism without causing sharp inflation spikes,” he said. Told.
Gupta, 62, shares his insights into the current currency scenario.
“Looking forward, the currency is expected to reflect the fundamentals of the economy’s recovery, as change picks up to widen the country’s manufacturing base; incremental reforms improve ease of doing business; and basic Efforts to accelerate investment in infrastructure are demonstrated through programs such as the National Infra Pipeline,
power, and asset monetization scheme, in addition to higher budgetary allocation for capital expenditure,” he said.
RBI and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have announced a project to link their respective fast payment systems such as Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow.
DBS is closely involved in supporting the efforts of the two central banks.
Gupta said the PayNow-UPI linkage will enable users to make instant, low-cost fund transfers between Singapore and India from one bank account to another.
“When implemented, funds can be transferred from India to Singapore using mobile phone numbers and from Singapore to India using UPI Virtual Payment Addresses (VPA),” he added.
India is indeed a startup hotbed, Gupta said.
“We strongly believe that technological solutions and innovations play a vital role in empowering the growth of startups and SMEs. Thus it is important for banking partners to provide solutions embedded in the ecosystem to these entities.
“At DBS, we not only work with startups but also collaborate with startup incubators in India to look at ways to support startups. Also, the bank’s ability to provide API-based integration capabilities One of the key success criteria in our partnership has been the start-ups,” said Gupta.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad said, “DBS is trying to better integrate our banking solutions into the existing startup ecosystem and provide efficient solutions for this segment.”
DBS created Evolution X to provide debt finance to growth-stage tech start-ups. This extends their fundraising runway with minimal dilution. DBS supports RBI’s decision to issue payment aggregator licenses to fintechs.
“As a bank operating in India, we see this as a positive step by RBI. We are looking to enhance and enhance our capabilities, as well as to provide settlement services to aggregators, leveraging our open architecture Payments for lifting are closely linked with companies on the platform,” he explains.
Asked whether DBS and other private sector banks will participate in multi-billion dollar infrastructure financing in India, specifically the public-private partnership (PPP) model and or build-operate-transfer (BOT) model In this, he replied, “While I do not wish to comment on other banks, we are generally sector agnostic in our approach and look at all aspects and the economic environment before doing so.”
“As a bank, we are committed to funding the transition to a low-carbon future and working with like-minded partners to transition industries from brown to light gray and gradually green,” he said. Told.
“We aim to become Net Zero in the coming decades. In October 2021, DBS became the first Singapore bank to sign the industry-led Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), convened by the United Nations.”
He said that as a signatory, DBS is committed to converting operational and responsible greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its lending and investment portfolio to align with the path to net zero by 2050 or before.
DBS, he said, seeks to provide sustainable financing to corporates to support their transformation towards a low carbon future.
DBS has committed a total of 20.5 billion Singapore dollars in permanent financing transactions in 2021, taking the bank’s cumulative effort to 39.4 billion Singapore dollars. With this, the bank has achieved nearly 80 per cent of the bank’s 50 billion Singapore dollar sustainability financing target by 2024.
In addition, DBS India continues to execute the Bank’s strategy to transform into a more diversified franchise in India in the large-corporate, medium and small-enterprise sectors as well as growing consumer opportunities.
“We recently launched a co-branded credit card and plan to offer the full DBS suite of products and services to our expanded footprint as an integration with LVB Progress.”
“We continue to invest in the development of India franchises. All profits from India are pledged back to the Indian subsidiary. In addition, in FY22, DBS Singapore placed an additional 1,040 in DBS Bank India to support growth plans. Invested capital of Rs.
DBS has established a banking network of over 500 branches in 19 states of India, which includes over 200 major centers across the country. The bank has been in India for 28 years.
[With PTI inputs]