Uday Kotak

Uday Suresh Kotak (born 15 March 1959) is an Indian banker and Founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank, where he currently serves as its non-executive director.

In the early 1980s, while India was still a closed economy and economic growth was muted, Kotak decided to start out on his own, refusing a lucrative job option from a multinational.

Over the next few years, he diversified his business into various areas of financial services, establishing a prominent presence in bills discounting, stockbroking, investment banking, car finance, life insurance and mutual funds.

He earned a bachelor's degree from Sydenham College and completed a postgraduate degree in management studies in 1982 from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies.

After completing his MBA, Kotak started Kotak Capital Management Finance Ltd (which later became Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd).

From a seed capital of less than US$80,000 borrowed from family and friends, he converted a bill-discounting start-up into a financial services conglomerate with assets of US$68 billion (as of March 2022), and the third largest private sector bank by market capitalization in India with over 1752 branches.

On 22 March 2003, Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd. became the first company in India’s corporate history to receive a banking license from Reserve Bank of India.

Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his wealth to be US$14.8 billion as of April 2021.

In 2006 he and Goldman Sachs ended their 14 year partnership when Goldman Sachs sold their 25% stake in two subsidiaries for $72 million to Mr. Kotak.

Kotak was raised in an upper middle class Gujarati Hindu family.

household with 60 people sharing a common kitchen under one roof.

The family was originally into combine trading.

He called this "Capitalism at work and Socialism at home".

His two pastimes had been cricket and playing the sitar.

In a 2014 interview with NDTV, he admitted that he was no longer pursuing his playing of the sitar.

His talent in mathematics influenced his choice of career.

During 2014, Kotak almost doubled his wealth as shares of his Kotak Mahindra Bank hit an all-time high after he sealed a $2.4 billion deal in November 2014 for rival ING Vysya Bank, partly owned by Dutch financial services group ING.

In 2015, Kotak enters the general insurance business and is partnering telecom magnate Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel to start a small payments bank.

Kotak has reduced his stake in the Kotak Mahindra Bank to 30% as of now, as he is required to bring it down to 20% as per RBI directions.

In August 2019 he was reported to be one of the most highly paid CEOs of any Indian bank with a monthly salary of inr 2700000.

He took over as President of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for the year 2020-21.

In August 2023, it was announced that Kotak's alternate fund management and investment advisory businesses would be combined into one entity called Kotak Alternate Asset Managers (KAAM).

It was reported that the entity would have $18 billion in assets under management, making it the largest asset management entity in India.

Kotak is a member of the Government of India's High Level Committee on Financing Infrastructure, the Primary Market Advisory Committee of the Securities & Exchange Board of India, Member of the Board of Governors of the National Institute of Securities Markets and ICRIER.

He is also Governing Member of the Mahindra United World College of India, and Member of National Council of CII.

Kotak is also a member of the strategic board which advises the national law firm, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.

He is married to Pallavi Kotak, has two children and lives in Mumbai.