Kotak Bank hopes to double customer base with ‘811’ facility

Kotak Mahindra Bank expects to double its customer base to 16 million within the next 18 months on the back of its newly-launched ‘811’ digital banking ecosystem. Further, with more customers taking to digital banking, the private sector bank’s future branch expansion will be more measured.

According to the bank, ‘811’ is a mobile banking app, which allows paper-less, real-time account opening, with
over 100 features for banking, payments and shopping. It offers a zero balance savings account with zero charges for all digital transactions and customers can earn up to 6 per cent interest on their savings bank accounts.

The customer acquisition cost, according to bank officials, is 80-90 per cent lower than the traditional channel. “Our view is customer ownership is important, the size of physical infrastructure has to follow that objective. And with ‘811’, we believe we can serve a lot more customers with relatively less branches than what we needed earlier,” said Uday Kotak, Executive Vice-Chairman and Managing Director.