Saraswat Co-operative Bank is India’s largest cooperative Bank. It has a presence across multiple states and has a business of more than ₹600bn – well above that of any other Cooperative Bank in the country. The bank got RBI approval to open new branches under the Annual Business Plan for FY 2022-23.

With RBI being stringent in granting new licenses, it was important for the bank to make use of the new licenses judiciously. The urban areas of Maharashtra already have a reasonably high density of both commercial banks as well as cooperative banks. Consequently, the Bank wanted to rely not just on their internal assessment but combine it with external data.

IndiaDataHub worked as a consultant to the Bank and worked closely with its Data Analytics team. We curated proxy indicators and recommended locations that the Bank ought to consider. Combining our understanding of data with modern cloud capabilities, we were able to submit our recommendation to the bank in just a couple of weeks.

The final decision of the management was broadly in sync with our suggestions with close to 90% overlap.