Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. is recruiting as many as 500 engineers as the billionaire Uday Kotak-backed Indian lender pushes to amp up its technology to lift its long-term competitiveness.
Chief Technology Officer Bhavnish Lathia is targeting recruits at large tech firms as well as competing banks to build a “technology company with a banking license,” he said in an interview. The firm’s technology workforce of more than 2,000 people is drawn largely from companies such as Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc., alongside Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., he said.
“Where we see a unique opportunity is in combining talent from deep tech companies with talent that brings deep domain expertise,” Lathia said. “To me, it’s like ginger and cardamom going into chai.”
India’s banking sector is ramping up investments in tech amid steady growth in deposits and buoyant credit activity. While adoption of artificial intelligence remains in the early stages across many firms, larger banks are increasing its use for customer service and fraud detection. Competition for talent is also picking up as global firms hire in India, pushing up salaries and attrition rates.
Kotak’s push pits it against other lenders in the region known for their technology prowess, including Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings Ltd. and Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd.
When a regulatory technology embargo imposed in 2024 due to shortcomings at Kotak was lifted last year, it paved the way for an acceleration of its tech drive, Lathia said.
The bank used the pause to rework its core banking systems and bring large portions of software development in-house, reducing reliance on external vendors and giving engineers tighter control over mission-critical infrastructure.
Since then, Kotak has gone more than a year without a single unplanned outage in its core banking system, while handling a 60% to 70% year-on-year increase in transaction volumes. Transaction latency — the time taken for a transaction to be processed and completed — on Kotak’s consumer-facing digital app has dropped to under 500 milliseconds, from a few seconds previously, he added.
Nearly 1,800 of Kotak’s engineers come from the technology and global financial firms Lathia targets, and the bank plans to hire an additional 300 to 500 engineers in the next financial year that begins April 1, he said. Lathia took over last year from his predecessor Milind Nagnur, who had also pushed a similarly-focused recruitment drive.
Meantime, Kotak is opening fewer physical branches than some peers while steadily increasing tech investment. Tech spending now accounts for about 13% of operating expenses, up from roughly 10% a couple of years ago, and continues to rise, Lathia said. The bank’s goal is to use automation and scale to keep costs stable even as business volumes grow, creating room to reinvest in platforms and products.
Artificial intelligence is becoming central to that effort. Kotak already uses machine learning and AI to monitor transactions, flag anomalous behavior and strengthen cybersecurity.
“In about eight months, almost everything we do will be AI-infused,” Lathia said, adding that hundreds of engineers are already using AI agents to generate code and nearly 35,000 employees use AI tools in their daily work.