The Reserve Bank of India has approved the appointment of Sashidhar Jagadishan, the predecessor of Aditya Puri, as the next Managing Director of HDFC Bank. Economic Times was the first to report in April that HDFC Bank had identified three people as possible successors to CEO Puri, including two internal candidates, Sashi Jagdishan and Kaizad Bharucha, who are both Executive Directors of the bank. Sunil Garg, Global Head, Citi Commercial Bank, had also been shortlisted as the external candidate. In August of last year, HDFC Bank named Sashidhar as a change agent and assigned him all important portfolios of the bank. He is currently responsible for finance, business strategy, and strategic initiatives. This indeed indicated that he might well be the candidate to succeed Puri if the board decides to choose an internal candidate.

Puri once said that the board of HDFC Bank greatly acknowledged the contributions of the insiders. He will complete his term in October 2020. He articulates, “I believe that this theory (of favouring insiders) has a lot of merit. Obviously, we know whoever is within the organization. If a lot of them have created a $100 billion franchise they must be competent. The board also acknowledges that we have very strong internal candidates. But, there were some people who felt that we should also look at external candidates so that we won’t miss out on anyone”.

Sashi comes with a very diverse experience having handled multiple functions in the bank and hence we believe he is the appropriate choice!

Sashidhar (lovingly called Sashi by colleagues), was the top choice for the job soon after Paresh Sukthankar’s sudden exit. He has been with HDFC Bank since 1996. The biggest challenge he might face is maintaining the gold standard that Puri has set for the bank. It is a complex combination of growth, compliance and risk that Sashi currently manoeuvres as the strategic change agent.

Sashi holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of Mumbai and a Master’s in Economics of Money, Banking and Finance from the University of Sheffield, UK. He is also a Chartered Accountant from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

“A major overhang about the CEO and leadership transition gets removed with this announcement,” asserts Suresh Ganapathy, Associate Director, Macquarie Capital. In an uncertain environment like this, we believe an internal candidate who is in sync with the outgoing CEO Mr. Puri is the right choice. Sashi comes with a very diverse experience having handled multiple functions in the bank and hence we believe he is the appropriate choice. What we hear from many employees is that Sashi is a hard task master and what is essential is to ensure the stellar execution track record that HDFC Bank has built over the years”.