V Vaidyanathan

The bold banker 

“Fortune befriends the bold”ꟷ is very apt to describe how V. Vaidyanathan (Vaidya) made this maxim come alive in real life. He is the Managing Director and CEO of IDFC First Bank, formed from a merger of IDFC Bank with Capital First, an NBFC he founded in 2010. Within a decade, Vaidya, sat at the helm of what is one of India’s most recognized and reputed banking institutions.

Vaidya has an uncommon combination of vision, will and strategy. Leaving a leading bank as a member of the Board in 2010, he boldly raised INR80 crores to buy equity of a INR780 crore market cap NBFC, by mortgaging his home and acquired stock. Within eight years, riding on the growth of over ten-fold in market capitalization of Capital First, he merged it with IDFC Bank that led to the creation of IDFC First Bank. Today, IDFC First Bank’s market capitalization is more than INR38000 crores.

Very early into his entrepreneurial career, Vaidya had started donating, and his public contributions run over INR70 crores. Vaidyanathan is an alumnus of the Birla Institute of Technology and Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

Vaidyanathan is shaping IDFC First Bank’s vision of making it a world class bank, that is ethical, digital and is a force for social good. If bold banking needed a face, it might very well be that of Vaidya.