The growth that we are targeting for our bank is in line with the banking industry.

Don't cut corners or compromise to achieve your dreams.

If you take existing ideas and make them affordable and scalable, you substantially change business models.

We have to understand that India is a complex country. Everything takes time for the real impact to get translated to the economy.

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.

I think competition is good. It finally delivers the best value to the customer, and I think it keeps all the players on their toes.

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.

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.

An entrepreneur, whether man or woman, has to be willing to take help, whether financial or technical, to grow his or her business.

Whenever there is a challenge, the key is not to get consumed by the challenge but actually to learn from it.

I believe in fate, but I also believe that hard work and diligence plays a very important role in our lives.

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.

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.

ICICI has been a meritocracy. So, a huge amount a lot of responsibilities, big roles, challenges, have been given to women, not because they are men or women or so on, but they were just given to people who have - who the organization believes has the capability to perform.

Our institutional framework needs to be bolstered further. We have to implement laws like the proposed Bankruptcy Code and GST (Goods and Services Tax), which will create efficiencies and strongly support the business environment.

A demography that is digitising rapidly, and the potential to invest in infrastructure, are the key strengths of India.

All three of us - two sisters and a brother - were brought up with an emphasis on academics.

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.

I have always been saying that while - the legislative reforms are good, but there are so many low-hanging fruits that we have look for by taking executive decisions. I think the government is actually moving in the right direction.

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.

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.

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.

There were so many occasions when I wasn't around for my kids or my husband. But we learnt to work around it.

I chose to be a working wife and mother. Why should I compromise on either?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have it all because my children did not whine and cry when I was not there.

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.

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.

Over the years, we have gone beyond our businesses to take up philanthropic projects in diverse areas - from education to health care to skilling.

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.

Life comprises of both: opportunities as well as challenges.

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.

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.

The important source of finance is now commercial papers, bonds, and so on.

No one thing can change the face of any sector.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is crucial to bridge the critical gap between manpower availability and employability by providing sustainable livelihood opportunities for all to grow and prosper.

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.

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.

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.

Punjab is central to our business strategy, and we are an active partner in the state's growth.

We will leverage technology to collaborate with the government in its e-governance initiatives.

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.