Citi is heavily committed to India on the institutional business: Tasnim Ghiawadwala

Tasnim: Overall, our ambition for the commercial bank is to more than double our market share. We have a two per cent market share globally, within our CCB business.

We are prioritising two big growth plays. One of them is to focus our growth on large developed markets. The other is around large, developing markets. The three markets that we are prioritising — India, China and Brazil — are where the economies and populations are vast and there is a long runway for us to go. A small percentage shift in our market share can make an enormous difference to our performance as a bank and our performance as a business. 

Tasnim: Whenever a bank decides to wind down a piece of business or sell something,there’ll always be a question around commitment to a country. Our institutional business is super large in India and we are heavily committed. The other piece of commitment is that Citi wants to grow, and identify markets where growth can be expected. India is clearly one of those markets. It is the third largest revenue contributor for us, excluding Mexico. If we can get it to double or triple, it just provides an enormous growth potential for us at the global-level.

Tushar: There’s a lot of positivity within our client base; they are looking to grow and we want to be their bank partner in their progress. That’s why we’re investing in India. Key focus industries include healthcare, chemicals, consumer, technology, industrials, digital such as new age companies, and tech start-ups and multinationals.

Tasnim: We have quite a broad-based approach and are also opportunistic. We like the fact that manufacturing in India is being promoted so much, and there are incentives around the ‘Make in India’ strategy such as the PLI and export promotion schemes. The other thing we’re very focused on is these fast-growing digital disruptor clients. We’re seeing the benefits of being the first mover in this space. Globally, the Indian team was pioneering in that space for us because this is where we first launched a digital vertical in the commercial bank. That decision was taken five to six years ago.

Tasnim: About 40 per cent of India’s unicorns bank with us. This was an early mover advantage. One of the things I’ve been pushing the team on is how to maintain this advantage. We are the only bank to have been on most of last year’s tech IPO’s in India, including Zomato, Nykaa, CarTrade, PolicyBazaar and Paytm.

Tasnim: The growth is going to come in two ways. One is acquiring more clients. We expect to grow our Indian client base by 50 per cent between 2021 and 2025. The other part of the growth is going to come from deepening relationships and our increasing share of the wallet. All the solutions that were made by Citi for the largest Fortune 500 companies are available for mid-size companies.

Another part of this growth will come from supporting clients’ to grow outbound. All this growth will require investment on our part. Overall, globally, we are looking to hire around 900 people for Commercial Bank, which is also seeing around 30 per cent in growth. We are looking to hire 80 people in India over three years; we have already hired 30 bankers.

Tasnim: As a conservative bank, we are always quite careful. But that doesn’t mean we don’t lend; we lend a lot. We have quite a large balance sheet that we offer to our clients. There is a lot of positive growth momentum in India and all our clients are looking to expand. We will be lending and growing credit with them. This continues to be our strategy.

We have a bit of a different approach to credit — we don’t like to lead with credit and only have a credit relationship. We look at the entire relationship, we look at all the value-added solutions that we’re able to offer and then, of course, there will be a credit component to any of those providers.

Tushar: We focus a lot on digitisation and solutions. 100 per cent of our onboarding is digital, 95 per cent of our cash and trade transactions are digital, and 99 per cent of all payments are digital. These are the kind of value-added services and solutions we provide to our clients. Even before the pandemic, we had prepared ourselves and our customers with our focus on digitisation. We have been supporting our clients throughout the period from the lockdown till date.