DBS sees growth potential in India despite slowdown

Hyderabad: DBS Bank, formerly The Development Bank of Singapore, expects its business to grow in India despite economic slowdown that the country is currently experiencing.

"When we see our customer-acquisition numbers and the way our products are taking off, we see decent growth.

Indian market offers tremendous opportunity for our growth," Priyashis Das, Head-Branch Banking, Wealth Management and Consumer Banking, DBS Bank India Limited, told the media here.

The bank serves about 25 lakh customers across 25 cities. Most of its customers use DigiBank, a paperless banking service launched by it.

The offers services to retail customers and has wealth management services targeted at NRIs and HNIs. It aims at doubling its NRI customer base this fiscal.

"We have about 75 touchpoints including 25 branches. We will take our network to 100 touchpoints soon," Das said.

The Singapore-based bank opened a branch in Hyderabad earlier this year.

"We acquired 40,000 customers in Hyderabad within a short span after opening our Hyderabad branch in March this year," he said, adding that plans are underway to open an experience centre, sixth one in the country, in Hyderabad soon.

DBS Group, which set up DBS Bank India as its wholly-owned subsidiary in the country, also has its technology development centre, DBS Asia Hub 2, in Hyderabad, where it employs over 1,900 people.

The centre has developed more than 350 application programming interfaces (APIs) for the group's global operations.