February 8, 2025

DBS Group CEO Piyush Gupta is bullish on India’s commercial potential and has adopted a “phygital” strategy to grow in the country, providing best-in-class digital capabilities to consumers. supported by a strong physical network.

The organization saw an opportunity to expand its business profile, which was dominated by large corporations, to include retail and SME clients, Gupta added.

“We are bullish about India as it is not just one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, but also accelerating very fast digitally,” the Meerut-born banker told PTI in an interview last Saturday.

“Our strategy in India remains to grow through a “phygital” model, offering best-in-class digital capabilities to our customers, supported by a strong physical network to help the last mile service,” he said.

DBS Bank India Limited (DBIL) has merged with Lakshmi

(LVB), which was merged with DBS on November 27, 2020 under section 45 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.

“Our main focus is to integrate it with our business and to grow organically,” Gupta said.

The latest Euromoney award for DBS as the leading bank supporting SME / MSME means more to do for the Indian market.

“We are delighted to be named ‘World’s Best SME Bank’ by Euromoney for the second time. Since its inception, DBS has supported local businesses and expanded access to credit in this segment,” said Gupta.

“Our digital capabilities have helped us serve our customers smoothly even during the pandemic in all our markets, including India. ” underlined the tech-savvy banking veteran.

DBS also helps MSMEs in India navigate the challenging business environment by disbursing part loans during the lockout months.

“We continue to see a huge opportunity in India’s SME and MME segments,” Gupta said.

“With an expanded footprint, we are further accelerating our efforts in this area, including making banking seamless by working on an industry-level digital platform,” he said,

RBI’s recent attempt to settle international transactions in rupees could be a step towards internationalizing the currency, he said. Higher demand for Indian Rupee (INR) settlements means reduced demand for FX for current account transactions, he said.

“In the short term, the weakness of the Indian Rupee is causing some concern. However, from different lenses, the fall in the currency is more contained this time around and is supported by better fundamentals. ,” Gupta, the naturalized Singaporean since 2009, pointed out.

“From a policy perspective, with the dollar appreciating in an environment of weak risk appetite and the upcoming balance of payments deficit at home, the changing balance is the continuation of money in a gradual reduction of the road as an adjustment mechanism without making sharp increases in inflation, he said.

62-year-old Gupta shares his insight on the current currency outlook.

“In further view, the currency is expected to reflect improving economic fundamentals, as the shift to expand the country’s manufacturing base gathers momentum; incremental reforms improve the ease of doing business; and the effort to accelerate investment in infrastructure is demonstrated through programs such as the National Infra Pipeline,

Shakti, and Asset Monetization scheme, apart from higher budget allocation for capital expenditure,” he said.

The RBI and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have announced a project to link their respective fast payment systems namely 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 quick, affordable fund transfers directly from one bank account to another between Singapore and India.

“If implemented, fund transfers can be made from India to Singapore using mobile phone numbers, and from Singapore to India using UPI virtual payment addresses (VPA),” he said.

India is actually a startup hotbed, says Gupta.

“We firmly believe that technological solutions and innovation play an important role in empowering the growth of startups and SMEs. Therefore it is important for banking partners to offer solutions to ecosystems in this 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 is one of the critical success criteria in our partnership with start-ups,” said Gupta.

“DBS continues to seek to better integrate our banking solutions with the existing startup ecosystem and provide solutions in this segment,” said the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, alumnus.

DBS created Evolution X to provide debt finance to growth-stage tech startups. This increases 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 move by the RBI. We continue to work closely with payment companies, to develop and expand our capabilities as well to provide settlement services to aggregators, using our open architecture. platform,” he pointed out.

Asked whether DBS and other private sector banks will participate in multi-billion-dollar infrastructure financing in India, particularly in the public-private partnership (PPP) model and or build-operate-transfer (BOT) model , he replied, “While I don’t want to comment on other banks, we are generally agnostic to the sector in our approach and look at all aspects and the economic situation before doing it.”

“As a bank, we are committed to financing the transition to a lower carbon future and want to work with like-minded partners to transition industries from brown to light brown and gradually green,” he said.

“Our goal is to become net zero in the coming decades. In October 2021, DBS will become the first bank in Singapore to become a signatory to the United Nations-convened, industry-led Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA),” he added. .

As a signatory, DBS is committed to transferring operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from lending and investment portfolios to be consistent with pathways to net zero by 2050 or earlier, he said.

DBS, he said, aims to provide sustainable financing to corporations to support their transformation towards a low carbon future.

DBS has made a total of 20.5 billion Singapore dollars in sustainable financial transactions by 2021, taking the bank’s cumulative efforts to 39.4 billion Singapore dollars. With this, the bank has achieved nearly 80 percent of Singapore’s 50 billion dollar sustainability financing target by 2024.

In addition, DBS India continues to implement the bank’s strategy to develop a more diversified franchise in India across the large corporate, medium and small business segments as well as the growing consumer opportunities. .

“We recently launched a co-branded credit card and have plans to offer the full DBS suite of products and services in our expanded footprint as the integration with LVB continues.”

“We continue to invest in the growth of the franchise in India. All profits from India are plowed back into the Indian subsidiary. Additionally, in FY22, DBS Singapore invested an additional INR 1,040 crore capital in DBS Bank India to support the country’s growth plans.”

DBS has established a banking network of 500+ branches in 19 states of India, covering over 200 key centers across the country. The bank has been in India for 28 years.

[With PTI inputs]

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