Chapter 12A: Eight years ago, I got a strange call from an IIT Alumnus.

Chapter 12A: Eight years ago, I got a strange call from an IIT Alumnus. His cousin sister needed help in negotiating a divorce settlement with her husband.

Nothing unusual. I put it away as some industrialist family. Then I got to see a list of assets. There was no business. No stock. Only real estate. And massive numbers. Like someone was investing 10 or 20 crores a month. Who was the individual. It finally emerged that this was one of the leadership team members of HdFc. The houses were in all kinds of benami names. But the banker was familiar. A week later I met another IIM Ahmedabad alumnus. He wanted to invest in movies – quickly. Any amount. His funder was Rana Kapors daughter.

I know HdFC and somehow still didn’t believe both.

The divorce went through and the individual soon acquired a trophy wife from Kolkata. There was no shortage of money and that solves most issues.

Then in 2021, I heard of a book on Deepak Parekh. I have known of HDFC for the last forty years. Have interacted with the founders over the years. TN Nagendra, Pradeep Shah, Deepak Satwalekar, Satish G. Mehta have all been well known figures. Deepak Parekh plays good bridge and is fairly popular in the Gujju crowd. And with men married to Gujrati women like Ajay Piramal, Ashok Singhania, Anand Mahindra. And to women married to Gujrati men like Zia Mody (daughter of Soli Sorabjee). And casino king Jaidev is Nita Ambanis cousin who is Mrs Piramals niece and it goes on. Bombay can be a very small place. For those who matter – everyone knows everyone. And it is very incestuous.

I read this book end to end. This was Citibank propaganda. HDFC was set up by TN Nagendra and Pradeep Shah. HT Parekh was the long retired ex Chairman of ICICI who came in as titular Chairman. Deepak joined way after the company was formed. It was a path breaking institution. But the real story was not the story laid out in the book. In order to justify why no one from HDFC Ltd was deputed to HDFC Bank, it is stated that this was the condition imposed by the HdFC Ltd Board. Reality is that the Board did not want to set up a bank. It is conveniently forgotten, that Natwest the dummy partner used to show banking expertise to get the license went bust and in fact had to be bailed out. That Indocean Chase invested the initial capital is overlooked.

And most important, there is no mention whatsoever of Citibank or that Citibank became the largest and controlling shareholder of HDFC Ltd in 2006. There is no mention of NPCI or of Co promoting CIBIL with SBI – and then selling off 92% of the company to Trans Union – constituting the greatest data theft in independent India.

The reality that the foundation of HDfC was laid on the premise that the builder could be eliminated to people to make their own houses using the coop society model. And the transition to the builder mafia and real estate bubble model is carefully removed.

And thus started my study again on what went wrong in indian banking.