Kolhapur-based Ratnakar Bank has raised equity funding from India's largest mortgage lender HDFC Ltd and consortium of private equity investors including Norwest Venture Partners, Beacon India Private
Equity Fund, Cartica Capital, Faering Capital, Gaja Capital Partners and Samara Capital, among others. The bank has raised Rs 720 crore through the issue. The firm has also opened its Mumbai Main Office at Lower Parel.
Ratnakar Bank, a scheduled commercial bank established in 1943, has a network of 98 licensed branches spread across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Karnataka & Goa. It has assets exceeding Rs 2086 crores and deposits of Rs 1585 crore as of March 2010. According to Care Ratings, the bank had a total income of Rs 157.39 crore with a net profit of Rs 19.4 crore during FY10. The bank’s Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) under BASEL II stood at a comfortable 34.07% with a Tier I ratio of 33.53%.
Vishwavir Ahuja, who headed Bank of America’s Indian unit till 2009, joined Ratnakar as its managing director and chief executive last year. It also appointed former Morgan Stanley India CEO Narayan
Ramachandran to its board.
It has also built up a senior management by appointing executives from various private sector financial services firms. These include Rajeev Ahuja (ex-Head, Fixed Income Capital Markets and Sales, Citibank), Shashank Mukherji (existing leadership in the Bank), Nitin Chopra (ex-CEO of Bharti Axa Life Insurance), Sunil Gulati (ex-Group President, Corporate & Institutional Banking, YES Bank), Suhas
Sahakari (ex-Head, SME Business, Axis Bank), Shanta Vallury (ex-Head, Liabilities Distribution, ICICI Bank) and Naresh Karia (ex-Country Controller, Citibank).
“The Indian Banking sector has one of the brightest opportunities today thanks to the growth being experienced by the country. We have taken a significant leap forward to participate meaningfully in this
growth. We are keen to address this by providing modern financial services to Emerging Large Companies, Small & Medium Enterprises, Retail Banking segments and the largely untapped Financial Inclusion segment, and be the ‘bank of choice’ in the segments we operate,” said Ahuja in a statement.
