Aim for the sky, but move slowly, enjoying every step along the way. It is all those little steps that make the journey complete.
Chanda Kochhar
Thankfully I have an ecosystem of in-laws, parents and husband, who are my rocks.
Chanda Kochhar
Only if you aspire for more will you achieve more.
Chanda Kochhar
Adaptability is a great asset to have because life is so unpredictable, and things can change overnight for any of us.
Chanda Kochhar
Getting small things like Visa or driving licence should be made easier as we, in financial service sectors, are dealing with financial regulations and tax constraints.
Chanda Kochhar
Take destiny in your own hands.
Chanda Kochhar
I believe in fate, but I also believe that hard work and diligence plays a very important role in our lives.
Chanda Kochhar
We believe the new banks will complement the existing banking system, and there will be opportunities for players to identify mutually beneficial partnerships.
Chanda Kochhar
I always believe that, as you start out, while you should have a big dream – a big goal – but it’s also important to move step by step. So, you know, frankly, if you ask me, when I started as a management trainee in 1984, I don’t know that I really thought that I would become the CEO.
Chanda Kochhar
We have always said that over the medium and long term, we will disinvest some part of our holding in our major subsidiary companies, and life insurance is our largest subsidiary company.
Chanda Kochhar
Remember to be sensitive to the feelings of people around you.
Chanda Kochhar
While working hard for my career, I looked after my family and have been there for my mother and in-laws when they needed me around. They reciprocated in kind with their unconditional love and support for my career.
Chanda Kochhar
I believe Indian banks have a strong funding profile with largely deposit-funded balance sheets, a large physical presence to cater to the needs of customers, and ability to provide comprehensive solutions to customers.
Chanda Kochhar
It is crucial to bridge the critical gap between manpower availability and employability by providing sustainable livelihood opportunities for all to grow and prosper.
Chanda Kochhar
I had to work just as hard as my male colleagues.
Chanda Kochhar
We have to always set an aspiration for ourselves and then strive to get there.
Chanda Kochhar
I think it’s important to celebrate your successes. It’s important to feel happy about them, but it’s equally important to look forward to the next big move.
Chanda Kochhar
I chose to be a working wife and mother. Why should I compromise on either?
Chanda Kochhar
It’s very important to have the comfort of the regulator in every geography where you operate.
Chanda Kochhar
The important source of finance is now commercial papers, bonds, and so on.
Chanda Kochhar
We need to take the country in the right direction, whether it is around administrative policy decisions or legislative changes or ensuring the macroeconomic stability.
Chanda Kochhar
I think we have to pick up some sectors where we can make India the global hub in the entire value chain, and the most important sector to pick up should be electronics.
Chanda Kochhar
I was only a young girl of 13 when my father passed away from a sudden heart attack, leaving us unprepared to take on life without him. We had been protected from life’s challenges so far. But without warning, all that changed overnight.
Chanda Kochhar
Innovation is a necessity.
Chanda Kochhar
Nobody likes high interest rates.
Chanda Kochhar
Clearly, for an organization to move on, it is the job of the leader to be that sponge that takes the stress from inside and the outside.
Chanda Kochhar
We will leverage technology to collaborate with the government in its e-governance initiatives.
Chanda Kochhar
My father, in a way, was a mentor in the way he instilled the basic values and ethics in me. My mother was a mentor by showing me an example to say that if women have tenacity, they can achieve whatever they have to.
Chanda Kochhar
Our parents treated all three of us – two sisters and a brother – equally. When it came to education, or our future plans, there was no discrimination between us based on our gender.
Chanda Kochhar
Two eyes are given for a reason. One eye to always look at the opportunity. The second eye to always keep looking at the challenges. Because if you don’t balance both, it’s very easy to get carried away one way or the other. And it’s when you balance the two that you find the most sustainable model.
Chanda Kochhar
As far as employees are concerned, clearly I like to communicate with them, since we are more than 40,000 people. I like to communicate either through e-mail or through video conferencing, which we do very often, and stream out videos and interviews. But more than that, I believe in traveling to my branches.
Chanda Kochhar
Rising incomes and positive demographics will provide opportunities for retail financial services in India.
Chanda Kochhar
We don’t understand the equity market well, and so we deploy funds in fixed-income securities, and like any other securities, investment in those securities also need to follow the mark-to-market accounting principle.
Chanda Kochhar
I use my interaction with both my kids to know how the youth today relates to technology, their expectations in terms of mobility and social solutions by customer services-oriented businesses like banking.
Chanda Kochhar
The restructuring theme can be of various kinds. Some amount of debt gets serviced out of cash flows, some gets back-ended and resolved with sale of non-core assets of the company, and some debt gets converted into equity which might today look like a haircut.
Chanda Kochhar
Mark-to-market losses are not real loss. It’s a notional loss. What we can monitor is the credit quality of the underlying papers. Are the companies paying interest on time? Is there any deterioration in the credit quality of these companies?
Chanda Kochhar
The consolidation that we started in 2009 was clearly the requirement of that time.
Chanda Kochhar
India did not innovate with the ATMs. But when we brought ATMs into India and made the machines talk in 15 regional languages to the people in rural India, we got millions of transactions on the ATM.
Chanda Kochhar
Any of our businesses will not exist in the form that is today, will not exist in the same form one year later, two years later… We have to worry about the disruptions in the business models and the practices.
Chanda Kochhar
I learnt to always keep my mind open to new ideas and looked at each new assignment as an opportunity to learn and prove myself.
Chanda Kochhar
Don’t cut corners or compromise to achieve your dreams.
Chanda Kochhar
India’s growth drivers are actually two growth drivers. One is consumption, which arises out of our demographic advantage. And the other is the investments. Because we need a lot of investment in the country.
Chanda Kochhar
What my parents believed was that, you know, the best wealth they could give to us children was to educate us and, you know – give us that foundation.
Chanda Kochhar
There were so many occasions when I wasn’t around for my kids or my husband. But we learnt to work around it.
Chanda Kochhar
Normally, we define banks as being either retail or corporate, but ICICI transformed itself from a corporate bank into a retail bank and, now, a universal bank.
Chanda Kochhar
When commercial banking opened up for the private sector, I set up the retail-banking division for ICICI and grew it substantially. I then ran the international side of the ICICI Bank for a few years.
Chanda Kochhar
The biggest challenge for me, for all of us, was that the consumer-credit market was very, very new for India and for ICICI. I was trying to create something that was not just new for me but absolutely unknown to the organization and the country as a whole.
Chanda Kochhar
I had to create a team of people who had worked in this industry for other banks. What I brought to that team was ICICI’s strategic thinking, but when it came to domain knowledge or product nuances, I had to learn from the team.
Chanda Kochhar
I have it all because my children did not whine and cry when I was not there.
Chanda Kochhar
It’s not easy to have it all. Frankly, you know, you have to give as much to the career that the career requires and, at the same time, you have to give as much to the family as the attention that’s required. But it can be done, yes.
Chanda Kochhar
We actually probably do nothing very special for women. But what we do in a very special manner is to remain an absolute gender-neutral, merit-based organization.
Chanda Kochhar
Over the years, we have gone beyond our businesses to take up philanthropic projects in diverse areas – from education to health care to skilling.
Chanda Kochhar
Our large size, capital base, robust funding profile, extensive distribution network, diversified portfolio, presence across the financial services sector, and leadership in technology position us very well to leverage the growth opportunities across the economy.
Chanda Kochhar
Life comprises of both: opportunities as well as challenges.
Chanda Kochhar
It is important always to make full use of opportunities that come your way, and at the same time, it is important to not just cope with the challenges but try and convert each challenge into an opportunity.
Chanda Kochhar
Whenever there is a challenge, the key is not to get consumed by the challenge but actually to learn from it.
Chanda Kochhar
When we look at the credit growth, we should look at it in its totality. Let us not only look at the non-food bank credit growth but also look at the growth across all the instruments of financing.
Chanda Kochhar
No one thing can change the face of any sector.
Chanda Kochhar
Resolution can be in any form – S4A, SDR or restructuring – but we need an enabling environment where bankers feel comfortable to take decisions and where they also feel obliged to implement decisions in a timely manner.
Chanda Kochhar
Let me talk about what the banks are doing, and I think the banks have been working to make sure that, as much as possible, we move the currency to the smaller areas and to as many set of customers as possible.
Chanda Kochhar
If we look at India and the Indian demographics and the Indian consumer, I think the Indian consumer is going digital, social, and mobile. They want everything in a digital format, everything available on the go, and we socially connected.
Chanda Kochhar
Every business has to re-think their own business model and say does it meet this DSM test and do their products and services meet the test of being digital, social, and mobile? I think the banks are doing the same.
Chanda Kochhar
What we see is that we actually have digital channels through which the customers interact, but we also take the absolute brick channels, which is the branch, and convert that experience into a more digitised experience.
Chanda Kochhar
One thing I would say about the Indian consumer is that as much change and as much technology, innovation that you offer to the Indian consumer, the Indian consumer is very receptive and actually keep expecting more, and we have had that great experience.
Chanda Kochhar
To reap this demographic dividend, we need to enable the youth to acquire skills required to get the job or become self-employed.
Chanda Kochhar
ICICI Bank was the first bank to recalibrate its ATMs for 2000 and then also for 500 rupee notes, and now we have some ATMs which give out 2000, 500, 100 – all of them.
Chanda Kochhar
Even if it does not become cashless economy, it will become a less cash economy, and I think that itself is going to be a good and big achievement, and I think we are, as a country, gone through many of large changes, and ICICI has been a leader in many of them.
Chanda Kochhar
The whole thing of moving the currency through currency sorting and detection machines and so on that was the whole process actually encouraging electronic transactions.
Chanda Kochhar
Punjab is central to our business strategy, and we are an active partner in the state’s growth.
Chanda Kochhar
What I was told by my parents was that, you know, take this inhibition out whether you’re a girl or a boy. Basically, pursue your dream, and as long as you’re a capable and hardworking human being, you will be able to follow and fulfill your dream.
Chanda Kochhar
She worked hard till she saw all of us through college and we became independent. I never knew that my mother had such a wealth of self-assurance and belief within her.
Chanda Kochhar
Remember that relationships are important and have to be nurtured and cherished. Also keep in mind that a relationship is a two way street, so be ready to give a relationship just as you would expect the other person to be giving to you.
Chanda Kochhar
The real underlying value comes if you can put a company back into a running state and it becomes a successful viable entity if it continues to repay loans.
Chanda Kochhar
Lending has come back in retail; it has come back in working capital. It has also come back in other forms, like government contract being given out to companies.
Chanda Kochhar
My priorities are going to be to play a very balanced role in the sense that I have to keep an eye on the challenges in the environment. At the same time, I have to keep an eye on the optimism that is there for India.
Chanda Kochhar
What’s important is that we see each year what the opportunities are, and make use of the opportunity.
Chanda Kochhar
Successful strategic vision lay in the fact that we visualized the retail business to be much bigger, ahead of what others thought it to be.
Chanda Kochhar
As we were growing retail, and it was a huge growth phase, it was very important to keep our quality under control. Therefore, it was not just distribution, not just back-office operations, but also the risk-management practices. And these we learned together, supported by technology.
Chanda Kochhar