Top Russian lender Sberbank looks to ramp up its India ops

NEW DELHI: Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, is looking to ramp up its operations in the country, opening up to 10 branches, investing surplus rupees from bilateral currency trade in Indian govt bonds and getting Russian investors to park funds in Nifty stocks.“We have a full banking licence here… we will expand our business in a step-by-step manner over three years. We will ramp up B2B business and enter into the B2C segment,” the bank’s CEO & chairman of the executive board Herman Gref told reporters here.Russian retail and institutional customers can invest in govt securities and the bank is also planning a product to finance gold imports from India. The interest goes beyond banking as talks have been initiated with a local partner to enter into the education space, with engineering schools. Besides, Gref said that the bank is working with Russian and Indian companies to expand the scope of bilateral trade by getting more exports to Russia, which is limited to traditional goods. This will also help address the issue of surplus Indian rupees.Gref said that nearly 80-85% of the payments for India’s exports are routed through Sberbank, while 10-15% of the imports are linked with the lender that saw a 14 times jump in transactions after the outbreak of the conflict with Ukraine, which resulted in a massive increase in import of oil as govt sought to take advantage of the hefty discounts. The banker said that it was important to develop hedging tools and Sberbank was working with an exchange in Dubai to ensure better price discovery of the bilateral currency trade. Currently, he said some of the payments are settled using a third country.“We have requested the central bank here to grant 10 branch licences for opening offices,” he said, adding that the lender has two branches and an IT unit in Bengaluru. Another tech centre is planned in Hyderabad and the headcount in India will increase from the current level of 900 employees.