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Mumbai: State-owned Bank of Baroda is aiming to double its in-house technology team headcount to 3,000 in the next two years, a top official has said. The new additions to the current team strength of 1,500 employees will be done both through the regular hiring processes and lateral hires of specialist talent, Debadatta Chand, its managing director and chief executive officer told PTI recently. "In the next two years, we will double the number of people in our IT team," Chand said after the announcement of its March quarter earnings. Recently, the Reserve Bank of India has taken stringent action on banks for shortfalls in technology architecture which impacted the ability to execute transactions. Apart from the 1,500 in-house workers, there are also contractual employees engaged by the bank in the IT function, Chand said. The bank is wanting to hire contemporary talent as part of the efforts to significantly up its strength of IT professionals, he said. The lateral talent will be across any grade, depending on the requirement and a candidate's experience, he said. He also said that a generative artificial intelligence-based platform will soon be going live for customers wherein a slew of services could be availed in an interactive way. Chand said that the bank has been spending aggressively on the technology front, including around Rs 2,000 crore investments on infrastructure alone, and will up the spends as the area comes under increased focus going ahead. In FY24, the bank had a budget of Rs 743 crore on technology and the IT spend stood at Rs 453 crore, as per management commentary. The bank is targeting to open 60 new branches during the fiscal year 2024-25. In FY25, the bank will be targeting a credit growth of 12-14 per cent, backing it up with a deposit growth of 10-12 per cent and aspires to keep the NIMs at 3.15 per cent, Chand said.

By maintaining the same nominal repo rate, the Monetary Policy Committee is not keeping rates unchanged, but actually raising the real repo rate, which is adjusted for inflation, Jayanth Varma, an external member of the rate-setting panel. Varma, who has expressed concerns about growth sacrifice due to restrictive monetary policy, voted for a 25-basis-point rate cut in the MPC's June policy review. Edited excerpts from the interview with Bhaskar Dutta:The RBI has been placing emphasis on the arduous and slow manner in which inflation is declining to the 4% target. Is the emphasis on reaching 4% and thus keeping rates unchanged a matter of ensuring the credibility of the monetary authority?First of all I think it is important to keep a sharp focus on the real policy rate and not on the nominal repo rate. It is a mistake to think that we are keeping rates unchanged by maintaining the same nominal repo rate; the fact is that, we are actually increasing the real repo rate. Second, there is no reason to worry about credibility at this point of time. Inflation expectations are well anchored, and the inflation targeting regime is working quite well. I do not find any merit in the proposition that an excessively high interest rate is needed to establish the credibility of monetary policy.If interest rates are kept where they are, do you think we will have missed the bus as far as the potential growth rate of 8% is concerned? You have spoken about an "unacceptably high growth sacrifice" due to restrictive policy...Missed the bus is too strong a phrase to use. The longer we keep real interest rates too high, the greater the growth sacrifice that we are making. Over a longer term, the risk is also that the economy gets conditioned to a low equilibrium of inadequate growth at a time of demographic transition that demands very high growth.What is your view on the RBI's repeated warnings about the uncertainty surrounding food inflation? Food prices have been volatile for months now due to supply shocks and weather-related factors...The good news about food prices during the last year has been two fold. First, food price spikes have been transient and have reversed quite quickly. Second, food price shocks have not had second round effects. Moreover, the monsoon is expected to be normal this year. So, I expect food price uncertainty to contribute more to the volatility of inflation than to its level.At what level do you think the repo should be at this juncture? You have spoken about how the prevailing 2% real policy rate is too high.I voted for a 25 basis point cut that would take the repo rate to 6.25% which would still be a restrictive monetary policy.

The combined market valuation of three of the top-10 most valued firms jumped Rs 1,06,125.98 crore in holiday-shortened last week, with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank emerging as the biggest gainers. Last week, the BSE benchmark Sensex climbed 217.13 points or 0.28 per cent. While HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Infosys were the gainers from the top-10 pack, Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Bharti Airtel, State Bank of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), Hindustan Unilever and ITC faced a combined erosion to the tune of Rs 1,01,769.1 crore. The market capitalisation (mcap) of HDFC Bank zoomed Rs 52,091.56 crore to Rs 12,67,056.69 crore. ICICI Bank added Rs 36,118.99 crore taking its valuation to Rs 8,13,914.89 crore. The mcap of Infosys climbed Rs 17,915.43 crore to Rs 6,35,945.80 crore. However, the market valuation of Reliance Industries tumbled Rs 32,271.31 crore to Rs 19,66,686.57 crore. LIC lost Rs 27,260.74 crore from its mcap which stood at Rs 6,47,616.51 crore. ITC's valuation eroded by Rs 14,357.43 crore to Rs 5,23,858.91 crore and that of Hindustan Unilever dropped by Rs 8,904.95 crore to Rs 5,73,617.46 crore. The mcap of TCS tanked by Rs 8,321.6 crore to Rs 13,78,111.45 crore and that of Bharti Airtel diminished by Rs 7,261.72 crore to Rs 8,04,262.65 crore. State Bank of India's valuation declined by Rs 3,391.35 crore to Rs 7,46,454.54 crore. In the ranking of the most valued firms, Reliance Industries retained the number one place followed by TCS, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel, State Bank of India, LIC, Infosys, Hindustan Unilever and ITC.

After a strong response to the IPO, Dee Development Engineers is likely to finalise the share allotment on Monday. The issue was booked nearly 100 times at close on strong interest from non-institutional and institutional buyers. Investors can check the status of their share allotment on the BSE or even by logging in to the registrar website.Firstly, here's how you can know the status on BSEStep 1: Visit the BSE Website (https://www.bseindia.com/investors/appli_check.aspx)Step 2: Please select the issue name, that is the company's name in the drop down.Step 3: Enter the application number or PAN number to check the allotment status.To check the status of Dee Development Engineers IPO allotment through the registrar, which is Link Intime India in this case, kindly follow the below steps.Step 1: Visit the Link Intime India website (https://linkintime.co.in/initial_offer/public-issues.html)Step 2: Select Dee Development Engineers IPOStep 3: Enter the PAN details and click search to know the statusDee Development Engineers GMPIn the unlisted market, the company's shares are trading with a premium of Rs 95. This compares with an IPO price of 203, indicating a gain of 47% on listing day, which is fixed as June 26.Also Read: IPO Calendar: Primary market to see 9 new issues and 11 listings next week in post-election boomThe net proceeds from the fresh issue will be used towards funding working capital requirements, repayment of debt, and other general corporate purposes.Dee Development Engineers is an engineering company providing specialized process piping solutions for industries such as oil and gas, power (including nuclear), chemicals and other process industries through engineering, procurement and manufacturing.The company has manufacturing experience of over three and a half decades and has been able to leverage its brand, strategically located manufacturing facilities and engineering capabilities to successfully expand the business.It also makes and supplies piping products such as high-pressure piping systems, piping spools, high-frequency induction pipe bends, longitudinally submerged arc welding pipes, industrial pipe fittings, pressure vessels, industrial stacks, modular skids and accessories including, boiler superheater coils, de-super heaters and other customized manufactured components.For the nine months ended December 2023, the company clocked revenue from operations of Rs 545 crore and profit after tax of Rs 14.3 crore. In FY23, revenue from operations increased 29% year-on-year to Rs 595 crore, while PAT jumped 57% to Rs 12.9 crore.SBI Capital Markets and Equirus Capital are the book-running lead managers to the issue.(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)