Opened its representative office in Dubai on Wednesday, with an eye on the Middle East market and its top official said it would provide a chance to investors here to access investment opportunities in India.
“We are taking a call that linkages between India and the Middle East will deepen,” Uday Kotak, the bank’s vice-chairman and managing director told Khaleej Times.
He said the global recovery from a punishing recession was likely to be sluggish and the large amount of liquidity and lower interest rated would mean that more investors would be looking at a growing market like India. The Kotak Mahindra Group is one of India’s leading financial conglomerates that offers everything from commercial banking and stock broking, to mutual funds, life insurance and investment banking.
The group has a distribution network of branches, franchisees, representative offices and satellite offices across India, New York, London, San Francisco, Dubai, Mauritius, Bahrain and Singapore abd currently services around 6.5 million customer accounts. The group has had a presence in the UAE since 1995, and was one of the first financial services firms to enter the UAE market. With the opening of Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Representative Office in Dubai,clients will benefit from a wide range of products and services that the group has on offer.
Kotak said the group would address the market at three levels — the Indian diaspora, non-Indians and institutions and the business would be largely Indian focused.
He said it was “back to business as usual” in India, which expects to grow at about 6.5 per cent in the current fiscal that ends in March 2010. The bank had seen a 20 percent growth in lending this year, Kotak said, adding that home, auto and agriculture loans had grown. “Today India offers one of the best investment opportunities anywhere in the world. The country has significant domestic demand, a stable government with a sustainable economic plan and a demographic split that can support rapid growth. Global investors are recognising the plethora of opportunities the country has to offer and the representative office in Dubai will serve as a vital link between Middle East investors and high yield opportunities in India,” Kotak said.
Kotak Mahindra is the latest to join a growing line-up of Indian banks and financial institutions that have various levels of representation in the UAE.
More than a dozen Indian brokerage companies and banks operate in the UAE under representative office or other licences that authorise them to market — rather than sell — Indian investment products to NRIs here. While Bank of Baroda is the only Indian bank that offers full-fledged commercial bank operations in the UAE, several other banks from the country had made their presence in the UAE by setting up representative offices over the past ten years. These include HDFC, State Bank of India, State Bank of Travancore, Union Bank of India, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Corporation Bank, IndusInd Bank, State and Federal Bank.
Indian brokerage firms present in the UAE include Reliance Money, Kotak Mahindra, Religare Securities, JRG Securities and Karvy.
The latest branch is the second branch of the company at Sahara Centre and one of the eight branches opened in the UAE this year, the exchange house said in a statement
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