Uday Kotak

Some Lesser Known Facts About Uday Kotak

• Uday Kotak is an Indian social worker, banker, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Kotak Mahindra Bank, a company specializing in banking and financial services. In 2023, he became the world’s third-wealthiest banker and the wealthiest banker in India.

• According to Uday Kotak, he lived in a very large joint family, consisting of sixty people, in Mumbai. While talking about it, in an interview, he said,
  

  I was born in Mumbai in a family where 60 people lived together. It was one huge floor in a large house. My father had come back to India from Karachi after the Partition. He was from a large family; my grandfather had five brothers. When my father came to India, we joined the main branch of the family who were already living here.”

• According to Kotak, he took a one-year break from pursuing his MBA due to a forehead injury he sustained while playing a cricket match.

• Following Uday’s surgery, which led to a temporary break in his studies, he joined his family’s trading business in Mumbai. However, he later quit handling the family business and founded a financial firm. While giving an interview, Uday revealed that he decided to leave the family business due to frequent disagreements with other family members regarding business management.

• After he completed his formal education, he received a job offer from Hindustan Unilever, which he rejected in favour of establishing his finance firm in Navsari, Mumbai. He talked about it, in an interview, and said,
  

  I applied for a job at Hindustan Lever, was selected and had made up my mind to join. At that stage, my father and I had a serious talk. He asked, Uday, what do you want to do in life?” I said, I don’t know; but I will not join the family business. I don’t want to have this problem of working with 14 family members and being one of them. He then said, What if I convince the family to give you a small office space to work? What would you want to do then? I said I would like to do financial consultancy. He asked the family and I took the bait. I was given a small office space to figure out what to do.”

• After the finance firm was founded, Suresh, his father, introduced him to Shivanand Mankekar, a finance expert, who educated Uday on the operations of the stock markets and finance.

• Uday Kotak, along with a banker named Sidney Pinto, started Kotak Capital Management in 1985. He started the firm with an investment of US $80,000 (Rs. 30 lakhs approx.), which he took from his close friends and family members. The company initially worked with Tata Group and Mahindra in giving bill discounts.

• While working with Mahindra, he met Anand Mahindra, who held the position of general manager at Mahindra & Mahindra at that time. Uday Kotak approached Anand and requested an investment of Rs. 1 lac in his firm. He also suggested a name change from Kotak Capital Management to Kotak Mahindra Finance.

• In 1989, after a significant increase in profits, Uday’s company shifted its focus from offering billing discounts to providing loans for buying cars.

• He purchased the H.L. Financial Consultants & Management Services Pvt. Ltd in 1990.

• Uday Kotak acquired a 10% stake in the Bank of Madura on 8 April 1992. However, the restriction at the time limited private entities to owning no more than 1% of bank stakes, so he had to buy the shares through various companies with different names. He sold these stakes in 2001.

• He was appointed as the director of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Company Limited (KMAMCL) in 1994.

  

• He made a deal with Goldman Sachs in 1995 to begin investment banking and brokering.

• He established Kotak Mahindra Capital Company Limited (KMCCL) on 27 July 1995.

• Uday Kotak bought Business Times (now Business Standard) in 1997. He purchased it for Rs. 1 crore at a time when his firm was under Rs. 1000 crore debt. While giving an interview, he said,
  

  It came to a stage when the Sarkars would have taken a tougher call. But before that, I said, add up whatever is the book value of your plant and machinery and we will make a financial investment, but we don’t want to run it. They were delighted. That’s how we got into Business Standard.”

• He became the director of Kotak Mahindra Prime Limited after establishing it on 13 December 1996.

• Kotak Mahindra Finance entered the mutual funds sector in 1998 and expanded into the life insurance sector in 2001.

• Kotak Mahindra and Ford Credit formed a partnership when Ford acquired a 40% stake in Kotak Mahindra Primus in the 1990s. However, this partnership ended in 2005 when Kotak Mahindra bought Ford Credit’s ownership. This led to Kotak Mahindra Primus changing its name to Kotak Mahindra Prime.

• He was appointed as the director of Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company Limited (KMLICL) on 31 August 2000.

• In 2003, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave the banking license to Kotak Mahindra Finance, which made the company the first privately owned company in India to become a bank. Afterwards, the company was renamed as Kotak Mahindra Bank.

  

• The joint venture between Kotak Mahindra Bank and Goldman Sachs came to an end after Goldman Sachs sold its stake in the bank for US $72 million.

• In November 2014, Kotak Mahindra Bank bought its rival ING Vysya Bank for $2.4 billion. ING Vysya Bank was co-owned by the Dutch bank ING.

• In the same year, Kotak Mahindra Bank became the largest holder of the stakes in Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) after it acquired a 15% stake from Financial Technologies Group for Rs. 459 crores (approximately US$75.21 million).

  

• He was appointed as the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s corporate governance panel’s chairperson in 2014.

• In 2015, Kotak Mahindra General Insurance, a division of Kotak Mahindra Bank, obtained approval from the IRDAI and started its operations.

• The Indian government made him the IL&FS board’s non-executive chairman in October 2018.

  

• On 1 January 2021, Uday Kotak was appointed as the Managing Director (MD) of Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited.

• A small-scale loan-providing company named Sonata Finance was purchased by Kotak Mahindra Bank for Rs. 537 crore (US$67 million) in 2023.

• During the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence panel discussion in April 2023, Uday Kotak said that the US dollar holds significant global influence, making it a “financial terrorist.” He later clarified his statement and said,
  

  In a recent discussion on US$ I had inadvertently used the words “financial terrorist” which I would like to correct. What I meant was that a reserve currency has disproportionate power, and whether it is a nostro account, 500 bps rate increase, or emerging countries holding $ for liquidity.”

• On 1 September 2023, Uday Kotak resigned from his role as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Kotak Mahindra Bank. ^[4]Deccan Herald

• According to Uday, he wanted to make a career in cricket as he was very passionate about the sport. He, however, had to give up on his ambitions when he underwent surgery due to a cricket ball striking him in the forehead.

  

• Uday has held the positions of member of the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the president-designate of the Confederation of Indian Industry.