Here's a great interview with KV Kamath, CEO of ICICI Bank, India's second largest bank. He had given this interview to Wharton Leadership Digest.
I have often been in awe of the ability of this organization to have scaled-up in the such a short span of time. The interview gives insights into the man, his beliefs, his innovative and sharp business mind( esp. when he speaks about the rural India model). Here are some excerpts:
So our challenge is to invent a new business model where we can create a distribution base effectively in 600,000 villages in India, and to learn to do that at one-tenth the cost of urban India. Just to put that into a scale that someone could understand, we believe that to succeed in urban India, we need to do be able to do business at one-tenth the cost of the west. The reason is that the ticket size of the banking product in India is one-tenth that in the west. If it is a deposit of $10,000 in the west, it will be $1,000 in urban India and $100 in rural India. Loans operate at a similar scale.
First, I look for intellect or a high level of competence. Second, I seek out entrepreneurial leaders who have the ability to pick the right people – that means looking at how the person has performed in other contexts to build teams. People who have the ability to build and manage teams are very valuable. Third, the person must have a can-do attitude. What sort of reaction do you get when you talk to him or her about a challenge? Will he go for it or is it a problem? Fourth, the right people have the ability to withstand shocks without getting flustered or losing direction. Finally, whether this is an entrepreneurial quality or not – I think it is an important quality that I look for in people whom we pick as leaders – it is the ability to focus, focus, focus without getting diverted from the core business.
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