Bandhan Bank announces its board members, Ashok Lahiri named as chairman

Former chief economic adviser to the Indian government Ashok Kumar Lahiri has been appointed as the chairman.

Founder of Bandhan Financial Service, Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, will be the managing director and chief executive officer of the private bank.

The other board of directors include B. Sambamurthy, former chairman and MD of Corporation Bank, C.M Dixit, Sr Partner at G.D. Apte & Co, Krishnamurthy Subramanian, associated professor at ISB, Snehomoy Bhattacharya, former ED at Axis Bank, Pradip Kumar Saha, CGM at SIDBI, Sisir Kumar Chakrabarti, former MD at Axis Bank, Bhaskar Sen, chairman, MD, UBI, P.S Raji Gain, CGM, NBARD.

The bank also unveiled its new logo, an image of the traditional Indian diya, designed by Ogilvy and Mather.

Bandhan Bank will be inaugurated on August 23 by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee. It will start its operation with over 600 branches across 27 states in India.

Addressing the media Ghosh said: “Initially we will be providing four basic services like deposit, credit, insurance and remittance. We are yet to finalise our interest rates. Over 64% of our 600 proposed branches will be in rural locations.”

As per the Reserve Bank of India guidelines, the banks have to float IPO’s after three years of operation.

The bank currently has 21,000 employees and is jointly held by International Finance Corporation, GCI, backed by Singapore government and three other trusts.

“We expect to have one crore bank accounts on our opening day. The bank will have two wings- catering to microfinance and the second catering to general banking. 

Bandhan will have 250 ATM counters across the country.

(Reporting by Adit Majumder)