How HDFC Bank Is Triumphing in India

Aditya Puri avoids e-mail, doesn’t carry a mobile phone or wear a watch, and goes home for lunch most days. That hasn’t stopped his HDFC Bank from becoming the country’s second-biggest lender by market value, after government-owned State Bank of India. “Banking is a simple business,” says Puri, 61, in an interview in his sparsely decorated office at the bank’s Mumbai headquarters, sunlight streaming onto the bare tiled floors. “You be too aggressive, it will come back and bite you on your backside.”

Led by Puri, who holds the title of managing director, the bank has posted profit increases of at least 30 percent in each of the past 10 years. Puri built the credit-card and consumer lending businesses into India’s largest while steering clear of losses incurred by rivals such as ICICI Bank, also based in Mumbai, and Citigroup, India’s biggest foreign bank by assets. Now he is expanding in investment banking, and wants to be among the top two or three players advising on mergers and acquisitions, project finance, and debt sales within three years.