mumbai for the announcement of idfcs banking operations on thursday the entire top management swapped their suits for nehru modi jackets the sartorial shift was aimed at highlighting the change in the banks focus the 18yearold institution which was focused on advancing loans worth hundreds of crores to corporates will now chase individuals for their savings accounts and home loans in addition to financing corporates of its 23 branches 18 will be engaged in what the banks md ceo rajiv lall describes as bharat banking or lending in the villages in an interview with toi lall speaks on why the bank will underinvest in branches excerpts you open the doors of your bank branch on october 1 will it be all systems go or will it be a gradual opening up the entire product suite will not be unveiled on october 1st and not all customer segments will be pursued with the same aggression as we will have a phased approach on day one our corporate banking treasury government banking wholesale banking and commercial banking will be 100 operational there will be greater product sophistication and deepening that will happen in commercial and wholesale banking in the next three to six months the 15 branches that will offer bharat banking with a joint liability group jlg product will be operational in personal and business banking we will start with simple savings account current account debit card cheque book net banking and a mortgage product on day 1 but only to a restricted audience of idfc bank employees we are going to use them as guinea pigs to ensure that all the kinks in the digital offering process and branch design are ironed out what is the timeline for rollout of services we will have a secondary campaign when we open all our retail banking services to the wider public from january 1 by march we are expecting that around eight branches across the country will open for personal and business banking in addition to the eight branches offering wholesale and commercial banking we will also have 45 branches doing bharat banking in madhya pradesh northern karnataka eastern gujarat and rajasthan over six months we will introduce product depth in bharat banking starting with microenterprise loans and individual loans and that product suite will continue to evolve over 12 24 months your skills are in infrastructure lending how will you grow your book given the sluggish demand for loans it is a historical skill set we have gone from 300 to 1200 people today we will have 2700 people by march of these 2700 there will be only 40 people who would do infrastructure today 95 of our book is in infrastructure loans over five years our expectation is that our loan book should be double the current size rs 80000 crore if not larger twothirds of that book will be corporate bank half of that around 35 will be infrastructure and around 25 will be personal banking