(28 May 2019 – India) Aiming to cash in on the rapid economic growth and pace of wealth creation in the world’s seventh largest economy, DBS has announced the a new wholly-owned subsidiary in India with bold plans to grow its branch network to over 100 touchpoints across 25 cities by 2021. To service its growing list of large corporates and SMEs, DBS Bank India opened nine new branches and extended its reach to Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Vadodara, Indore and Ludhiana in Q1 2019.
The Singapore headquartered bank also has plans to expand its footprint in Gurugram and Noida in the National Capital Region and open five branches in unbanked rural centres to complement its plans of adding approximately a thousand employees to its Indian workforce.
The strengthening of the group’s 'on the ground' presence complements DBS's earlier launch of its mobile banking offering, digibank, in 2016. Since its launch nearly two years ago, digibank’s Indian userbase has grown to over 2.5 million users which benefit from unsecured loans and paperless onboarding for mutual fund investments.
“India is one of the six core markets for DBS Bank. It is our strategy to have a full service and diversified franchise across all our customer segments and business lines in each of these markets. We are bullish about India as it has been witnessing an accelerated digital transformation apart from being one of the fastest-growing markets in the world” stated DBS India General Manager and CEO Surojit Shome.
“We think that the opportunity to access the banking wallet in India is different from what it would have been five years back because of these changes. We believe we can combine the strengths of a strongly rated, well-capitalised and managed bank with that of an innovative digital disruptor with global recognition as a digital innovation leader in the banking sector to create a differentiated proposition to carve a profitable niche for DBS in India” he added.