One of India?s fastest growing private sector bank Axis Bank, has charted out an ambitious plan to take on competition and expand. Speaking with FE, chairman and CEO PJ Nayak mentioned a plan to expand the bank?s network across the Asian region and also in India, mainly through an organic route.

He said, ?We have aimed to become a leading and dominant Asian bank within a span of five years from today. We have thus already set up a branch network in Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, and also plan to convert our existing representative office based in Shanghai into a full-fledged branch soon after April 2008. We plan to set up few more branches across Asian countries. Our overseas balance sheet is currently sized over $1.5 billion. It accounts for around 7% of our total balance sheet. We will, therefore, like to take an active part in overseas merger and acquisition activities. Apart from rendering offshore corporate banking service to the Indian companies, we have now begun doing syndication of foreign currency debt and the convertibles in the overseas markets.?

?In the next fiscal year, we have planned to open over 150 branches, especially in tier II and tier III Indian cities where liability business growth is phenomenal currently. Since we are largely saturated in all the metros, the intention now is to penetrate all district as well as taluka headquarters of the country. Also, the thrust would be to open more rural branches to boost our agriculture lending business. We look forward to increase our presence in north-eastern states of India since our business growth in these regions at present is faster than the growth witnessed in metro cities of India,? Naik added.

Nayak ruled out a possibility of any equity dilution or initiating a fund raising activity in the near future. ?Our bank?s capital adequacy ratio as on December 31, 2007 was as healthy as 16.88%. Our existing capital will last with us for at least three years as we have focused mainly on pure organic growth,? he said.

Axis Bank is currently growing at around 50% annually, and has 650 branches and 2,600 ATMs across the country. The bank?s net interest income, fee income and income from treasury activities currently account for 60%, 30% and 10% share of the total income respectively.