Ambitious, cynical and keen to add more zeros to their net worth — is this your mental image of successful bankers after the recent debacles at Wall Street? Then you should meet Vikram Limaye — a career banker, Wharton alumnus and now Managing Director and CEO of IDFC, and you would want to redefine that image.

He quit Wall Street because he dreamt of working in the Indian government; says he didn’t mind the monetary loss because ‘there is more to life than money’.

And he lives in the same apartment block where he spent his childhood, because he likes it there.

Limaye complies readily when I ask for a breakfast meeting during a Chennai visit. He meets me on the dot at 8.30 a.m. at The Chambers, the business centre at Taj Coromandel. The dark-panelled room is deserted as we settle down to chat about IDFC’s strategic choices.

Capital-light

Did IDFC diversify into so many new areas because it foresaw poor prospects for infrastructure lending?

On the contrary, says Limaye, explaining that it is project lending that has helped IDFC’s balance sheet grow 14-fold since 2005, to its current size of Rs 60,000 crore.

What the company wanted to do was add a few ‘capital-light’ businesses to the capital-guzzling one of lending. Hence the forays into investment banking, mutual funds and private equity, which allow IDFC to earn fee-based income, he says. Limaye was in fact instrumental in driving IDFC’s acquisition spree — it bought investment banking firm SSKI and StanChart Mutual Fund. The latter buy has worked out exceptionally well, growing from assets of Rs 16,000 crore to Rs 40,000 crore in just four years.

The perfect and the good

Everything one hears about India’s infrastructure story nowadays is negative — stalled clearances, disputes about pricing and so on. What has changed with these laws in the last three years?

Nothing, says Limaye, only that they are being implemented by the book.

But he argues for some pragmatism here. “We cannot take the position that development is not as important as being socially responsible. We need the jobs. We need to pull people up out of poverty. The perfect cannot be made an enemy of the good.”

Nor is he pessimistic on the infrastructure story. “You simply cannot be long India, short infrastructure,” he says, resorting tomarket-speak.

The hotel staff arrive to take our orders. After sifting through numerous options ranging from pancakes and, muesli to eggs-as-you-like-it, I settle for the good old masala dosa. Limaye is even more spartan, opting for some idli s.

Our orders arrive and I am glad to see that my dosa isn’t ‘rocket-shaped’ and spilling out of the plate; I seldom manage to finish those. The sambar is surprisingly good — hot, spicy and fragrant, not its tepid fine-dining cousin.

Call of public policy

As Limaye drowns his idlis i n s ambar, I turn to his surprising decision, of returning to India after working in Credit Suisse First Boston at Wall Street for eight years.

But Limaye doesn’t seem to think there is anything surprising about that.

“It was never my intention to settle down in the US. I wanted to work there for a while, but I always wanted to do something in public policy (in India)”, he says. Many of us are full of good intentions when we set out, but how many of us actually act upon them? But I keep that thought to myself. Limaye explains that since he had always wanted to come back home, he decided to make the move when his daughter was three and was set to start school. He wanted her to start her Junior KG at Bombay Scottish, where he himself studied.

“In Bombay there are only two problems that can disrupt your life — education and housing. If you have those two under control, there is no stress”, he says smiling for the first time during our chat.

So if he was keen on public policy, how did he end up in IDFC instead of in New Delhi? Limaye found that a lateral entry into the government was no cakewalk.

After many unsuccessful conversations, it was Deepak Parekh who advised him to join IDFC, because it needed senior people.

To Limaye, it was a shot at doing something of ‘national importance’ in India, while also drawing upon his financial industry experience. He returned to India in 2005.

With the ‘India story’ in much doubt, does he now rue his decision to relocate?

“No. I only feel disappointed that we have lost a golden opportunity to get ahead of the rest of the world. Five years ago, we didn’t have to sell the India story to anyone. Now we are back to where we started,” he says with genuine regret.

And, what does his wife think about coming back?

He does, however, feel that his wife, a paediatric endocrinologist, may have enjoyed a more lucrative career in the US.

He adds that it is his wife’s decision to spend more time at home that has helped him pursue a high-profile career with punishing hours.

Home’s where the heart is

Both of us have polished off breakfast by now and are sipping filter coffee.

I pop an uncomfortable question. Didn’t moving to India mean making a big monetary sacrifice?

Limaye says it did. “In those days, in India you never got the kind of compensation that you got on Wall Street,” he says, but adds in the same breath, “I had other things to focus on. I’m a very simple person. For me, it doesn’t take very much to live a decent life.”

He quips, “I don’t have aspirations of owning yachts, planes and fancy cars.”

Limaye is quite comfortable with his middle-class moorings, quite happy to live in a flat in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park. “It’s a middle-class locality. My father lived in the same apartment and so did my granddad.”

Isn’t he ever tempted to move to a swankier location? No, says the chief of India’s largest private sector project lender. In fact, his family actually redeveloped the flat recently so that they could continue to live there. “It is where I grew up. It is hard for me to think of home outside that area.”

One only hopes many others will find their home in India more tempting than big bucks at Wall Street.

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