How Uday Kotak built a valuable Indian bank

‘I have always held a deep belief that an institution like a bank must live forever. If what you have created does not outlive you, then you have failed. It is the true test of what you are building.’ How did Uday, a scion of a well-established cotton trading family, break away from the ready nest-egg offered by the traditional family business to set up his eponymous Kotak Mahindra Bank, known for being one of the most expensive bank stocks in the world? ‘How Uday Kotak Built a Valuable Indian Bank’ recounts the story of a young man, brought up in a family with Gandhian values and a simple middle-class ethos, who just wanted to be a professional cricketer. With a foiled dream and a deep desire to do ‘something on my own’, Uday started out with an MBA degree and an innate ability to spot unseen business opportunities, to set up a company in the small office space provided by his father. The company crossed various trials by fire in tandem with India’s economy to emerge as the bank with the highest market price to book ratio in the world, a measure that indicates the efficiency of the bank in value creation as perceived by investors. Based on personal interviews with Uday, his Kotak team and friends, readers will learn what it takes to create a world-class financial conglomerate with international standards of corporate governance and asset efficiency. How Uday Kotak Built a Valuable Indian Bank is the sixth and final book in the series, Shapers of Business Institutions.