12,000 field workers carrying devises will help customers enroll without visiting branches; Plans to begin with 600 branches spread across 27 states
Come this festive season, expect executives from the yet-to-form Bandhan Bank to appear at your door step armed with a sophisticated hand-held devise to convert you into a customer of country's newest banking entity.
Bandhan will be unleashing an army of 12,000 field workers carrying devises procured at a princely sum of Rs 14,000 a piece that would pretty much save its customers the trouble of visiting its nearby branches, which on the day of opening would number around 600 spread across 27 states including Maharastra, Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, chairman and managing director of Bandhan, told dna.
"We would be depending upon hand-held devises mostly in the smaller towns and rural areas, and have put into use about 14,000 hand-held devices being tested by our existing micro-finance staff and new recruits for the upcoming bank. We have procured about 14,000 customised large sized hand-held devices each costing Rs 14,000, having multiple functionality like account opening, fund transfer, withdrawal, giving transaction statements," Ghosh said on the sidelines of the Association of Micro Finance Institution's Summit.
For the urban areas, the bank is setting up a network of 250 ATMs sourced from Diebold.
"We plan to launch the bank before the start of the festive season beginning September so that we can get a share of the festive bonus that salaried people get," Ghosh said.
The exact bank opening date would be decided only after the bank receives the final banking licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which Ghosh expects to come about by May-end.
Bandhan currently has a staff strength of more than 16,000, of which 3,000 are new recruits for the bank and 400 taken laterally from other banks.
"The branches in the urban areas would be headed by people sourced from other banks while branches in rural areas would be manged by those drawn from our micro-finance business. When cultural assimilation process is completed, we would try to shift people from urban to rural areas and vice-versa,'' he said.
Ever since Bandhan got the preliminary license to operate a universal bank in April last year, it went slow on its existing micro-finance business as it had to prepare and transform itself into a full-fledged bank.
But even that go-slow attitude led to 36% growth in loan portfolio to Rs 9,600 crore in 2014-15. Out of Rs 3,500 crore incremental loan portfolio, Rs 1,500 crore came from new customers, he said.
But the growth in portfolios would dip significantly in 2015-16 onwards as Bandhan's micro-finance business comes to a close as it transforms into a bank a few months from now, with growth likely to come to a level enjoyed by the banking industry.
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 "Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, chairman and managing director of Bandhan Bank")
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