The bank has chosen for the first time Hyderabad as the potential developing place in India to start with.

The online network will be done at all the 20 IBM (computerised) branches in the city with an investment of Rs 5 crore in a span of 3 to 4 months time, he said.

The bank will call for a tender soon to shortlist the candidates for providing consultancy, maintaining and inter-connectivity among each branches to facilitate customer service further to enable to operate from any of the branches, Radhakrishnan said.

On the success of this, the bank will take it to other metropolitan centres, which contain over 500 computerised branches, in a phased manner, he said.The bank will soon open a branch at hi-tech city in Hyderabad and will put up the centralised server for the online services at this place, he said.Our focus will be to mobilise resources on a continuous basis. One of our main thrust will be on concentrating individual loans like consumer, education, personal finance, housing loan, car loans etc. he said.

As for as Andhra Pradesh is concerned, the bank plans to introduce 7-days banking in some of the Hyderabad branches where the business potential is high and will be extended to other branches later on, he saidAP zonal officer has witnessed a jump in advances from Rs 691 crore from March 99 to Rs 742 crore in March 2000 and the cash deposits increased from Rs 530 crore to Rs 637 crore as on March 2000, S Bhaskaran, zonal manager, said.