DBS India to hire 600-800 persons for expansion plan

DBS India will hire about 600-800 persons in the next one and a half years as part of its expansion plans, as the Singaporean lender now has acquired a domestic subsidiary licence in India, a senior official of the bank said. As part of its branch expansion to nine new locations during this month, three branches kick-started in Gurugram, Noida and Coimbatore.

"We are looking anywhere between 600-800 people for our branch expansion over the next 12-18 months, including people at our technology development centre in Hyderabad," Shantanu Sengupta, head (consumer banking group), DBS Bank India, said at the inauguration of the Gurugram branch.

The DBS group has close to 1,200 persons at its Hyderabad technology centre which was started from scratch about two and a half years ago, he said.

DBS India said the expansion drive, which includes establishing over 100 customer touch points, a combination of branches and kiosks across 25 cities in the next 12-18 months, entails an investment of Rs 125-150 crore.

Three branches were opened in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Vadodara, while one more was added in Mumbai. Two more branches will come up in Indore and Ludhiana.

DBS Group until now used to operate through branches in 12 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Nashik. The Singaporean lender is the largest foreign bank to become a fully-owned local subsidiary.

The bank is also looking to treble its balance sheet size over the next five years from about Rs 50,000 crore currently and will set up around 100 customer touch-points over the next 12-18 months.

The bank said it would also rejig its business portfolio mix by focusing more on the retail and small business enterprises.

"Retail business is absolutely our focus. Going forward, we see a broad cut of 40:30:30 coming from large corporate, SME and retail business. Retail for us is primarily digitally led the business for us," said Niraj Mittal, head (institutional banking group), DBS Bank India.

Last week, the Reserve Bank of India approved the Singaporean lender's proposal to become a wholly-owned subsidiary and on Monday, it announced the official launch of its locally-incorporated unit -- DBS Bank India.

DBS Bank India plans to add 1000 more techies at tech hub in Hyderabad

DBS Bank India is looking to hire around 1,000 more technology engineers for its technology centre 'DBS Asia Hub 2' here over the next 24 months, a top official said.

The DBS Group had established a technology hub DBS Asia Hub 2 in Hyderabad in 2016, the group's largest technology and operations hub outside of Singapore.

The Singaporean lender is the largest foreign bank to become a fully-owned local subsidiary.

"The hub has about 2,000 engineers building smartest solutions, 1,200 software engineers and developers work with DBS and about 800 who work with partners and build our technology products.

We expect to grow it to 3,000 over the next 24 months," DBS Bank India chief executive Surojit Shome told reporters after launching its first branch in Hyderabad.

He said they expect the bank's balance sheet to grow by three times in the next five years from the current Rs 50,000 crore.

The bank invested (capital) Rs 7,700 crore for its banking business in India and Rs 1,800 crore was invested in 2018.

DBS Bank India currently operates in 12 cities and intends to establish over 100 customer touchpoints-a combination of branches and kiosks--across 25 cities in the next 12-18 months and invest Rs 125 crore to Rs 150 crore on the network expansion.

"Roughly about half of what we develop (digital solutions) is developed in the second technology centre (DBS Asia Hub 2) in Hyderabad.

We expect to employ around 1,000 more technology engineers and people with software skills as we build new solutions," he said.

DBS Asia Hub 2-Head Mohit Kapoor said the recruitment drive is already on and hiring is done through different channels, including hackathon.