Flipkart Billionaire Fails to Secure India Bank Permit

Anup Roy, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- The Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday rejected all four applications seeking new universal banks, including that by billionaire Sachin Bansal, co-founder and former chief executive officer of e-commerce platform Flipkart.

Bansal’s Chaitanya India Fin Credit Pvt., the micro finance arm of his fintech platform Navi Technologies, didn’t make the cut for running full-fledged banks in India, the RBI said in a statement on its website.

The other three “not found suitable” for a universal bank license were UAE Exchange and Financial Services Ltd., The Repatriates Cooperative Finance and Development Bank Ltd. and a proposal by former Citigroup Inc. banker Pankaj Vaish with others.

The banking regulator has been conservative in issuing full-fledged banking licenses, even as it has allowed a number of smaller banks, including digital ones in the country. The RBI awarded two full-fledged licenses last in 2014, while shying away from granting licenses to industrial houses.

Alongside rejecting the universal bank applicants, the RBI also rejected small finance banks aspirants -- VSoft Technologies Pvt. and Calicut City Service Co-operative Bank Ltd.

Applications including from Dvara Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services Pvt. and Akhil Kumar Gupta for small finance banks remain “under examination,” the central bank said.

Overall, the RBI had received 11 applications for floating banks, the latest one being in December last year. The applications are reviewed by an external advisory committee, formed in March last year, with former deputy governor Shyamala Gopinath as the chairperson.