Articulating a new vision for SBI

In its bicentennial year in 2006, the State Bank of India (SBI), India’s oldest and largest bank was not exactly in an enviable situation. The liberalization of the Indian economy that had started a decade and a half earlier had spawned a few major private rivals—nimble, technologically advanced, free of the many government constraints in operations and with a young urban image—that were threatening its position as the country’s largest bank. If the current trends continued it would lose its largest Indian bank status in six short years.