The IDFC First Bank board has given their approval for fundraising of Rs 3,000 crores. The stock has also had a stellar start to 2021 with a 56 percent rally so far. V Vaidyanathan, Managing Director and CEO IDFC First Bank spoke to CNBC-TV18.

On raising capital, Vaidyanathan said, “That Rs 2,000 crore was raised on June 20 was because of large accounts we had lost capital and now we are seeing very strong growth opportunities from here on because we have been hearing how things are coming back in India across all sectors. So for that growth, we wanted to be really well capitalised and we feel a fantastic time on the horizon in terms of lending opportunities for us.”

On the growth guidance, he said, “Our loan book last year has grown by 24 percent on the retail side and we feel confident of growing at a 25 percent year-on-year (YoY) for many years to come. This capital of Rs 3,000 crore actually will take us to upwards of about CET I core equity itself of close to about 15.5-16 percent or somewhere in that zone. That should give us good strength to take care of that 25 percent sort of loan growth that we are expecting even in the upcoming year 2021-22.”

On the margin, Vaidyanathan said, “Margins will definitely improve and the trend will continue to look up and we will quite confident about that.”

He further added, “We love tier II and tier III, so that is the segment we will grow more of branches in and we feel we will go slow on branches from now on, on the urban side.”

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(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)

First Published:Feb 19, 2021 12:37 PM IST