Mr. Sanjaya Gupta

Sanjaya Gupta, is a well-known retail and corporate banker who started his career with HDFC Ltd. as a management trainee in 1986. He steadily worked his way up the ladder and came to industry prominence in 1994 when he convinced both the National Housing Bank (NHB) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to allow domestic housing finance companies (HFCs) to extent housing loans to non-resident Indians (NRIs) to acquire their homes in India and re-pay the loans through normal banking channels in Indian Rupees from abroad – a win win situation for NRIs to hedge currency risk and the country to augment foreign currency remittances. He set up a vast international network of branches for this purpose for HDFC Ltd. which is still operational.
He worked across international geographies – was head of ABN AMRO Bank NV retail mortgage operations – centralising operations through KPOs in the US, Eastern Europe, India serving 67 countries working 27X7 365 days like an oil refinery.
In 2007, he headed, managing director, of a four-way, prestigious joint venture between the National Housing Bank (NHB), International Finance Corporation (IFC), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and American International Group (AIG Inc.) to bring mortgage guarantee into the country mitigating credit risk paving way for secondary retail mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) in the country. He was instrumental in bringing Basel II in the country – which was the turning point for Indian banking sector which brought the Indian commercial banks in prominence with international investors.
In 2009, the government of India, laterally inducted him as managing director of PNB Housing Finance Ltd. to turn around a languishing, 100% government owned, unionised housing finance company. Which under his aegis performed exceptionally well, had the most successful IPO of 2016, and when he retired in 2020 was the third largest HFC of the country. This is a published turnaround story by Blombery in a book titled ‘ Switch’.
Now, he actively consults with private equities, ADB, the World Bank, sovereign funds, management consulting firms, the regulators e.g. NHB & RBI also have him as an advisor. He is also on few boards of directors as a non-executive director.
He is an avid trekker and in his own words his first love is automobiles.