HOW KOTAK MAHINDRA BANK WAS STARTED

Shri Uday Kotak, founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited, decided to start out his own financial and debt-recovery and collection agency at Navsari building premise in 1986. The main aim of this agency was to collect debt and recover money from their customers any way they could, legal or illegal, not unlike how mafia or loan sharks are shown in Bollywood movies. Except this is a real life story. Various tactics were used by their firm to collect debts from customers and it is said that their debt collection agency went to great lengths to recover money from suffering people by even joining hands with the Bombay mafia at that time. Sometimes even customers who did not have a loan nor owed any money to their financial company or agency were put on their debt collection list as part of a scam and were harassed and bullied for 'debt' collection. It is said a few of their customers were actually shot at because they were unable to pay money to their agency. Over the years, this business was later converted to Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd.

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Ultimately, it was using this blood money and harassment money from Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd. that Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited was finally started in 2003 after obtaining a bank licence from Reserve Bank of India.