Uday Kotak, From An Aspiring Cricketer To A Billionaire Banker
“The joke in the family is that when the ball hit on my head, it did some cleaning up,” says Uday Kotak.
Like many other Indians, Uday, then 20, was passionate about cricket. “I was both a batsman and a bowler.”
But then he got hit on the head with the ball. “It was a pretty serious injury. I was operated upon within three hours, and narrowly escaped,” he said in a conversation with David Rubenstein, the co-founder of Carlye Group Inc., at the Bloomberg India Economic Summit Thursday.
That’s when his father and grandfather said enough is enough and it’s time to forget cricket. Uday switched to his other passion—finance.
He went on to found Kotak Mahindra Bank, India’s third-largest lender by market value. That made Uday Kotak, now 61, a billionaire.
“The joke in the family is that when the ball hit my head, it did some cleaning up and I finally got more focused into work and my passion for finance,” Kotak said.
Listen in to the full conversation as Uday Kotak goes down the memory lane to recount the start of his financial empire.