Narayanan Vaghul. File picture.
| Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
Narayanan Vaghul, the legendary Indian banker and founder-chairman of ICICI Ltd handed away in Chennai on May 18 attributable to age-related illnesses. He was 88.
Mr Vaghul is survived by his spouse Mrs Padma Vaghul, youngsters Mohan & Sudha, and grandchildren Sanjay, Kavya, Anuv and Santosh.
Narayanan Vaghul was born within the pre-independence period in 1936 in rural south India. His household moved to Chennai (then Madras) the place he studied at the well-known Loyola College. Banking was not Mr Vaghul’s first alternative as a profession. He initially wished to affix the civil companies however didn’t make the minimize in his first try However, he cleared the examination to enter the newly shaped State Bank of India (SBI), which he later remarked, he had tried as a “practice test.” His father then nudged him to take up the SBI job and he joined the financial institution in 1955.
He later stop SBI attributable to intense political strain. He was described as uncompromising and sincere to the core.
At SBI he was launched to ace banker R.Ok. Talwar who formed his life and banking profession. After SBI he joined the National Institute of Bank Management the place he subsequently grew to become its Director.
At the age of 39 he ascended to nice heights when he was supplied the place of Executive Director at Central Bank of India. Then he moved on to the Bank of India as its Chairman & Managing Director in 1981. At the age of 44, he was the youngest Chairman of any public sector financial institution.
Between 1981 and 1985 is when he headed the event financial institution ICICI Ltd. as its Chairman & CEO. It was beneath him that ICICI Ltd remodeled from a improvement financial institution to India’s second largest personal sector business financial institution.
He additionally wrote for The Hindu on financial points.
A brand new period of Indian banking
Mr Vaghul is credited with laying the muse of a brand new period in Indian banking by the creation of Universal Banking mannequin to cater to the wants of assorted segments of shoppers. It was he who launched the idea of credit standing in India and established CRISIL in 1987.
He mentored quite a few skilled who dominated the banking panorama for many years. These embrace Ok.V. Kamath, Kalpana Morparia, Shikha Sharma, Renuka Ramnath to call a couple of. It was he who introduced in, and aggressively promoted, gender impartial hiring at ICICI, a observe which was later adopted by the banking sector in addition to the company sector generally.
During his stint at ICICI many ladies leaders in banking had been elevated who later joined different banks at the helm.
He was honoured with quite a few awards together with the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to the banking and financial system sector of India.
His honesty and rules may be gauged from this excerpt from his e-book ‘Reflections’ which was launched by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in (*88*), a couple of months again: “Fairly early in my career, when I was working at SBI, I had gone to the Mumbai train station at around 5 am to receive my wife and two children. They were arriving from Chennai after a difficult journey of well over 36 hours. A ticket examiner asked me to produce the tickets. When my wife did, he remarked that we had a half ticket for my daughter, who according to him, appeared to be older than 12. When I pointed out that she was only 10, he asked me to produce the birth certificate, which he obviously knew I did not have with me.”
“He kept arguing and my wife was getting impatient after the long journey, the porter who was carrying the luggage nudged me to pay Rs 20 to settle the matter. I decided in stead to pay the penalty which was double the fare.”
“I told the ticket examiner that I would collect my refund from the railway by producing the birth certificate. I had to make half a dozen trips to the railway headquarters and ultimately got a refund of around Rs 60.”
“While leaving the office after collecting the cheque, I heard the clearly remarking that this was the first time he had come across a fool who would spend so much money to collect such a small refund when he could have settled the matter on the spot for a small sum. I nevertheless felt a sense of pride in sticking to my principles,”
This is who Mr Vaghul was.
