On 1 October 2026, two of India's biggest private banks named chiefs who were trained at the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) group, within hours of each other. Anup Bagchi was named to run Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) Bank, and Anup Kumar Saha to run Kotak Mahindra Bank. Mr Bagchi has spent about three decades in the ICICI group, while Mr Saha spent 14 years at ICICI Bank.
HDFC Bank is India's largest private sector lender, and Kotak Mahindra Bank is described as the country's fourth-largest private bank. With these two moves, the top office at each of them goes to someone whose career was shaped inside the same group.
They are the latest of 19 ICICI alumni profiled in this article who went on to run, chair or regulate Indian financial institutions over the past two decades, which the banking industry would attribute to the extraordinary leadership quality of KV Kamath, who transformed the stodgy project-lending institution Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India into ICICI Bank and, in the process, gave opportunity to dozens of bankers to rise to leadership roles.
The top job at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has now fed three bank chief appointments. Shikha Sharma, formerly of ICICI, who led the insurer, went on to run Axis Bank in 2009. V Vaidyanathan, executive director of ICICI Bank and a former chief executive of the insurer, has led IDFC FIRST Bank since 2018. Mr Bagchi, also an ex-ICICI Bank its current chief executive, is moving to HDFC Bank.
Mr Bagchi will serve as managing director and chief executive officer (MD and CEO) of HDFC Bank from 27 October 2026 to 26 October 2029, subject to shareholder approval. He succeeds Sashidhar Jagdishan, whose term ends on 26 October 2026.
A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore, Mr Bagchi joined the ICICI group in 1992. Over 34 years he worked across treasury, corporate banking, retail banking, capital markets and insurance. His main posts were:
- MD and CEO of ICICI Securities from May 2011 to October 2016. He oversaw the digital growth of ICICI Direct, the group's retail investment platform.
- Head of ICICI Bank's retail banking from November 2016, which meant running the business through the disruption caused by demonetisation. He was an executive director of ICICI Bank from 2017 to 2023.
- MD and CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance since June 2023, where he worked on profitability, capital efficiency and digital distribution.
The RBI's vetting reportedly included feedback from the insurance regulator and from ICICI Bank chief Sandeep Bakhshi and weighed whether three years in insurance would affect his return to mainstream banking. His profile gives HDFC Bank a chief with experience in retail deposits, digital technology, risk management and the sale of several financial products under one roof.
Mr Saha spent May 2003 to June 2017 at ICICI Bank. He ran retail secured assets, business intelligence, credit cards, retail structured finance and rural collections. He holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow.
He then joined Bajaj Finance in October 2017 and spent more than eight years building digital lending, consumer finance and risk systems. He was that company's MD and CEO from April 2025 until he resigned in July 2025.
He joined Kotak Mahindra Bank in January 2026 as a whole-time director, taking charge of consumer banking, marketing and data analytics. Under Section 35B of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, the RBI cleared him as MD and CEO for three years from 1 January 2027, when he takes over from Ashok Vaswani. His brief at Kotak centres on growing the retail deposit base, lowering the cost of acquiring customers and using large-scale data work to improve net interest margins.
How ICICI Became a Leadership Factory
ICICI began as a government-backed development financial institution (DFI). In the mid-1990s, Narayanan Vaghul judged that DFIs would struggle in an economy being liberalised and deregulated. He spun off specialised businesses, such as ICICI Securities, which was created in partnership with J P Morgan, and pushed decision-making down to junior and mid-level managers.
KV Kamath became chief executive and managing director in 1996 and sped this model up with ambitious growth targets, quick adoption of technology and a push into retail banking. Under him, ICICI carried out a reverse merger with ICICI Bank, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, acquired other banking franchises and built arms in life insurance, general insurance, venture capital and asset management.
Several habits of the group helped build leaders:
- Early ownership. Mid-level executives were handed whole new businesses, such as retail credit cards, secured assets and internet banking, and had to run full profit-and-loss accounts early in their careers.
- Rotation across arms. Leaders moved between the bank and subsidiaries such as ICICI Lombard (general insurance), ICICI Prudential Life (life insurance), ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company (mutual funds), ICICI Securities (investment banking) and ICICI Venture (private equity). This kept people from working in silos and produced general managers able to run a financial conglomerate.
- Rewarded risk-taking. The group backed speed and calculated risk. High performers received large amounts of capital to grow their units, while weak results led to quick changes in management.
- Crisis training. Executives learned to handle shocks on their own, from the 2008 global financial crisis to the 2016 demonetisation.
When vacancies opened at rival institutions, ex-ICICI professionals were natural candidates.
Banks: From Axis to HDFC
Seven ICICI alumni have been named to run banks, or foreign banks' Indian operations, since 2006; Mr Bagchi and Mr Saha have yet to take charge. The table below covers the five Indian private banks, and the next section covers the two foreign banks' Indian arms.
Ms Sharma played a leading part in setting up ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and built it into India's largest private life insurer. She left in 2009 to run Axis Bank. In her nine years there, the bank moved from being a corporate lender to a retail-heavy one, with a larger branch network, a bigger credit card book and stronger digital services. She and Chanda Kochhar had been rivals to succeed Mr Kamath at ICICI, and Ms Sharma quit a month after Ms Kochhar was named CEO, as per Bharatpedia.
Mr Vaidyanathan led ICICI Bank's retail franchise as an executive director during its fast expansion between 2000 and 2009, then headed ICICI Prudential Life before leaving the group in 2010 to become an entrepreneur. He bought a stake in a small listed non-banking financial company (NBFC), renamed it Capital First, and grew it through technology-led consumer credit. In 2018, he merged Capital First with IDFC Bank to create IDFC FIRST Bank, which he still leads.
Foreign Banks' Indian Arms
Global banks looking to grow in India have often hired senior ICICI executives for their regulatory knowledge, institutional contacts and capital markets skills.
Ms Morparia, a lawyer by training, was a close adviser to Mr Kamath as ICICI turned into a commercial bank. At J P Morgan, she led the expansion of investment banking, global markets, wealth management and treasury services in South Asia for over a decade.
Ms Daruwala managed ICICI's relationships with India's largest corporate groups, debt offerings and project finance restructuring. At Standard Chartered, she focused on cleaning up the balance sheet, improving asset quality, covering corporate clients and bringing in wealth management. The research report describes her as the first Indian woman to head the bank's domestic operations.
Mr Chatterjee† was central to building ICICI Bank's overseas presence in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. At Goldman Sachs India, he drove investment banking deals, principal investing and equity capital market advice. LinkedIn lists also name him as an ICICI alumnus, but the first source could not verify this, and he is included here on the strength of the research report.
Beyond Commercial Banking: NBFCs, Insurance, Asset Management and Private Equity
Alumni also lead or chair institutions outside commercial banking.
Nilesh Shah is another prominent investment and asset management executive with a significant association with the ICICI Group. A gold-medallist chartered accountant (CA) and merit-ranked cost accountant, Mr Shah served as chief investment officer at ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company from 2004 to 2010, overseeing equity and fixed-income investments. He subsequently held leadership roles at Axis Capital before joining Kotak Mahindra Asset Management, where he has served as group president and managing director since 2015. Mr Shah has also held industry and policy positions, including chairman of the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) and part-time member of the economic advisory council to the Prime Minister, and has served on SEBI advisory committees.
Mr Saha's short stint at Bajaj Finance, covered above, makes him a further non-bank link.
Mr Srinivasan helped set up ICICI's early asset management efforts and then spent over 15 years building Aditya Birla Capital into a listed conglomerate covering life insurance, asset management, housing finance, health insurance and NBFC lending. Ms Ramnath had been picked by Mr Kamath to lead ICICI Venture after work in merchant banking, e-commerce investments and structured finance. Her Multiples platform has raised funds running into several billion US dollars and backs Indian companies in pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, technology and financial services. Mr Mor built quantitative approaches to micro-credit and later applied financial access models to public health and rural development.
Early Builders of Market Infrastructure
The habit of ICICI people building new institutions goes back to the late 1980s under Mr Vaghul.
CRISIL was India's first independent credit rating agency, and OTCEI was an early automated equity trading platform. Between them, they show that ICICI trained people to build the plumbing of Indian capital markets as well as to run banks.
The Regulator: Madhabi Puri Buch at SEBI
Madhabi Puri Buch chaired the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) from 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2025. She was the first woman and the first private-sector professional to hold the post. She succeeded Ajay Tyagi, a former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer.
She began at ICICI in 1989 and spent about 22 years there across sales, marketing, product development, operations and corporate planning. About 12 of those were at ICICI Bank, including three as an executive director. She was MD and CEO of ICICI Securities from February 2009 to May 2011. At ICICI Securities, she worked on digital brokerage, wider retail participation in markets and financial product design. She then spent several years in private equity at Greater Pacific Capital in Singapore and served on company boards across Asia, before joining SEBI as a whole-time member from April 2017 to October 2021.
The Controversy
Her term ended amid controversy. Hindenburg Research alleged conflicts of interest involving offshore investments and advisory firms owned by her and her husband, and the opposition questioned her ICICI Bank Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs) and pay during 2017–2024. The couple rejected the allegations. Her tenure also saw investigations into large business groups, short-seller reports, and debate over conflict-of-interest disclosures and the work culture inside SEBI. She was succeeded by IAS officer Tuhin Kanta Pandey.
The 2008–2009 Succession and the Exodus
The spread of ICICI alumni was not only a slow drift. A big push came from the succession contest after Mr Kamath decided to step down as MD and CEO of ICICI Bank. The bank had an unusually strong senior team, and the candidates reportedly included Ms Kochhar, Ms Sharma, Ms Ramnath, Mr Chatterjee and Mr Vaidyanathan. When the board chose Ms Kochhar, several of the others left.
As they had run large profit-and-loss units, they were quickly hired. Ms Sharma went to Axis Bank, Ms Ramnath launched Multiples, Mr Chatterjee took over Goldman Sachs India, and Mr Vaidyanathan eventually built Capital First and IDFC FIRST Bank. The knock-on effects reached well beyond ICICI:
- Ms Sharma and Mr Vaidyanathan carried ICICI's retail distribution models, credit scoring methods and aggressive digital acquisition tactics to their new employers.
- Alumni in asset management and private equity applied the group's risk management, deal-sourcing methods and governance practices across the wider industry.
- Foreign banks and traditional private lenders, which had worked at a slower pace, had to adapt as ex-ICICI leaders brought faster execution, tougher performance targets and more technology spending.
Why ICICI?
No study explains the pattern, so what follows is a reading of the career records, not a finding.
Retail lending is the common thread. ICICI built its retail business from around 2000, and by 2009 retail made up 58% of its loans, up from zero. Many alumni then ran retail: Mr Vaidyanathan as head of retail banking, Mr Sabharwal as retail head, Mr Saha in secured assets and cards and Mr Bagchi in retail, business and rural banking.
The group's breadth is the second thread. Within one employer, people rotated through the bank, securities, insurance and venture arms: Ms Mulye (CFO, ICICI Venture), Ms Buch (ICICI Securities), Mr Bagchi (securities and life insurance).
Delegation and a willingness to leave. A third explanation, offered by industry commentators on LinkedIn, is that ICICI gives staff unusual empowerment and its people are willing to leave. The leadership practices set under Mr Vaghul and Mr Kamath, namely early delegation, movement across subsidiaries, data analytics and aggressive digital distribution, then travelled with the alumni to Axis Bank, Standard Chartered India, J P Morgan, IDFC FIRST Bank and now HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Career Trajectories at a Glance
And why did one of their senior executives later have to forcibly step down from a leadership role at another private bank?
So, perhaps the entire narrative around these executives being exceptional leaders is largely hype. The reality may be that many of them were simply very good “Yes Men” — a trait that may have helped them rise to senior positions within their parent organisation in the first place.