Bandhan Bank further strengthens core management team, appoints Kumar Ashish as Head- Emerging Entrepreneurs Business

In line with the Bank’s business strategy, a new vertical has been formed to better serve the emerging and diversified needs and aspirations of this segment.

This new vertical is called Emerging Entrepreneurs Business (EEB). In addition to microloans, the vertical will also manage micro home loan, micro bazaar loan and micro enterprise loan.

To spearhead EEB, the Bank has recently appointed Kumar Ashish as Executive President and Head – EEB. Ashish is a veteran banker with over 26 years of experience in setting up and managing businesses of significant scale in retail and business banking, rural banking, microfinance, agri banking and treasury.

Ashish spent about two decades at ICICI Bank, where in his last role he was Senior General Manager & Retail Business Head for North India, leading a 10,000+ strong team of sales, relationship, service, credit and operations staff across Mortgage, MSME Loans, Auto Loans, CV & CE Loans, Personal Loans, Jewel Loans, Credit Cards, Deposits, Wealth Management, Fee Income and Branch Operations. During the long stint with ICICI Bank, Ashish also led the Rural, Agri-business & Micro Finance portfolios for the bank as the Country Head for those lines of business. In his last assignment prior to joining Bandhan Bank, Ashish was Group Director, Airtel Money in Africa (a division of Airtel Africa), which runs mobile money operations across 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ashish will be based out of Bandhan Bank’s headquarters in Kolkata and will report to Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer.

Speaking on his appointment, Ghosh said: “At Bandhan Bank, the last five years have seen us build a strong foundation. We are committed to our next five-year strategic vision and are ready for the next phase of growth. In line with the capability requirements, the Bank has been focussing on capacity building both through training and upskilling of existing employees, and through lateral hiring. I am delighted to welcome Kumar Ashish to the Bandhan Bank family. He brings with him a wealth of experience in banking, which will be an asset for us. We are confident that Ashish will drive the newly formed EEB vertical to success. I wish him the best.”