Prakash Tandon wrote ‘The Banking century’ a while ago - but banking in India has nothing to do with time and movement – they are mere concepts or were - until recently. All that has grown to dizzying heights within the Indian banks in the last thirteen decades is the altitude of registers and ledgers – and yes, the geographic reach of the various branches. Counter-hopping with a token in hand has been the nightmarish norm – all nationalised banks offer the customer this equal opportunity of a run for their money. On the threshold of next millennium, the banking industry in the west is seriously considering biometrics – but we have had biometrics since time immemorial – the good old thumb impression – our own cutting-edge technology. The sad truth is that most banks in India are still creaking open their ledgers and struggling to computerise.

The pre-historic pace of Indian banking was suddenly upset with the arrival of HDFC Bank in 1995. This new bank shook up the dormant banking scene with an intensity that could be called seismic– perhaps a 7 on the Richter scale – figures are relative! At the epicentre was Aditya Puri – the MD/CEO of the newly formed HDFC Bank. Aditya came in with an impressive portfolio – twenty years with Citibank – he was the CEO of Citibank Malaysia before he joined HDFC - even before the Bank began functioning. Leaving the gloss of Citibank, Aditya came back to Bombay/Mumbai, planned and strategised first from a room "...with one table and one broken window", then moved to an abandoned mill to save high urban rentals – and the rest is seismic history. Today the bank has over 115 branches and more than 2300 employees countrywide.

A Chartered Accountant by qualification, Aditya is a homegrown entity. He did his schooling in Poona, college in Chandigarh, Chartered Accountancy from the Institute of Chartered Accountants, India, and articles with Thakur Vaidyanath Iyer. Aditya planned to use technology in a big way – and he did. HDFC Bank today is technology –driven. In its short life span of 5 and a half years, the HDFC Bank has set an amazing track record. Last week the financial magazine Forbes Global rated HDFC Bank as one of the top 20 small companies in the world. Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and analysts have ranked it as one of India's fastest-growing and best-managed banks. It has 1.2 million customers. It is India's largest privately owned bank. Its return on equity last year was 29%. Euromoney awarded it ‘Best Bank-India’ for 2 consecutive years and so did Finance Asia.