‘Don’t obsess about just market share’
Speaking with Shereen Bhan, Keki Mistry explains why HDFC never chased growth at any cost — and why saying no to market share obsession became one of its most defining decisions. While many believed HDFC was too conservative, Mistry breaks down how clear objectives helped the institution scale responsibly without compromising its foundations.
At HDFC, growth was always calibrated to market conditions, with asset quality, margins, cost control, and a matched balance sheet acting as non-negotiables. “You can get all the market share you want, but it will never give you long-term success,” says Mistry, warning that short-term goals often lead to damage that surfaces years later
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Transcript
Transcript
Transcript
One of the other issues that I want to talk to you about and also understand from you the lessons and insights through your journey at HDFC. And, and many would argue that, and perhaps this is a criticism that you heard several times through the course of your career that HDFC was too conservative, that you could have grown far more than what you what you did, but the balance between growth and excessive growth or sometimes irresponsible growth finding that sweet spot. You know what was the Compass that guided you as CFO must have very, very clear, along with the with the CEO have must have very clear objectives for the company. We are extremely clear objectives. We are 4 main objectives. The first objective was growth. It’s not that we were against growth. We wanted growth, but we wanted growth at a pace that we would set for ourselves depending on the market conditions. If the market conditions were conducive, we could hope for a higher growth or we would target a higher growth if the market. Conditions were not conducive for whatever reason we would plan a lower growth. Number 2 was asset quality. We said that the most important thing is asset quality. We will not know compromise on asset quality or on margins just to get growth and therefore we don’t care for market share. You know, it became so difficult to convince some of our international investors who are used to the idea of market share and everywhere he would say, my angulata would come and say you lost 10 basis points of market share and I would say on TV I’d be don’t care for market share. Market share is not important in the financial services business because you can get all the market share you want but it will never give you long term success. So market share, asset quality, cost control and the 4th objective was keeping a match balance sheet. These were our objectives. So you should keep that objective in mind. Don’t chase market share for the sake of chasing market share because by chasing market share and having the short term goals, you will do something which will go wrong and did the damage will not come now, the damage will come two years, three years. Variously expressed.