As Jaipur Superfast Express chugged into Mumbai Central station that early December morning on 5/12/1994 to be precise, I was set to commence my new professional journey with all its excitement. I had already taken a short bath inside the train’s toilet and had dressed myself up to to go straight to UTI Bank’s Central office ( as the Bank and its corporate office were then known as) and report for duty. I lodged my suitcase at Mumbai Central cloakroom , hired a taxi and reached 13th Floor, Maker Tower F at around 9.30 AM. It was too early in those days when the city of Mumbai, especially its business district started late at 11 AM.
Coming from a well established old State Bank associate to a new private sector bank with two branches ( the first one in Ahmedabad was inaugurated by the then Finance Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on 2/4/94 and the second one at Fort had just opened a few days ago in the last week of November), Head Office under construction and a few employees trying to put some rules and regulations in place to run the bank, the true feeling was one of nervous excitement!
From there to writing credit and merchant banking proposals ( investments, underwriting, bankers to the issue mandate etc) in hand ( we were yet to get used to independent use of computers) to working across branches, to opening a large branch to contributing to the transformation journey towards the fag end of my career is a story that’s replete with interesting moments, anecdotes, highs, lows, struggles all told quite often and yet never failing to warm the cockles of the listener’s heart.
While I have grown old and retired from Axis Bank ( the rechristened UTI Bank) in 2022 after being part of the evolution journey traversed by the Bank for almost 28 years from its inception in 1994, the Bank is now in the prime of its youth, transforming itself to give customers a totally refreshing experience and its competitors a run for their money.
The above feeling of nostalgia got triggered by a mail sent by Axis Bank’s CEO ( not to me as an Ex staff or individual, but as a customer of Axis Bank), celebrating the Bank having crossed the milestone of having completed 30 years of its journey, rededicating the Bank and and its staff to the cause of customer service. As the Bank crosses more such milestones, the chest of several of us old surviving ex Axians will continue to swell with pride. After all, seeing an organisation growing from its humble origins to becoming a conglomerate and a behemoth is once in a lifetime experience.
Arvind Arya blog 