Anticipating increased competition for talent in the backdrop of the Reserve Bank of India opening up the banking space for 23 new entities, HDFC Bank stepped up hiring in the second quarter.
The private lender hired about 4,000 employees in the July-September period as against about 1,000 in the same period a year ago.
“With the digital and technology drive, we have been doing a number of new initiatives to put this in place. We have newer businesses and the incremental initiatives require human skills,” Paresh Sukthankar, Deputy Managing Director, HDFC Bank. “We have done substantial hiring in the previous quarter,” he said.
The bank’s employee headcount increased to 83,000 as of September 2015 compared with 75,000 as of September last year.
From a medium- to long-term perspective, the bank sees less dependence on human capital with technology taking over.
Sukthankar believes that HDFC Bank is already a payments bank as well as a regular bank.
Given the bank’s 55 per cent presence in semi-urban and rural locations, a majority of the hiring is taking place in tier-4 to tier-5 cities.
According to reports, HDFC Bank is set to hire about 12,000 employees in the current year.