Bandhan Bank Ltd, one of the two entities to receive a universal banking licence in 2015 and the only microfinance institution to do so, has started preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), three people aware of the development said.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2014 gave an in principle approval to infrastructure financier IDFC Ltd and microlender Bandhan Financial Services Pvt. Ltd to start new banks, making them only the third set of private sector lenders to be given such licences in two decades. Before that, banking licences were issued a decade earlier, when it awarded licences to Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd and Yes Bank Ltd in 2004.
