ICICI Bank, which has opened its first branch in China, would also keep reviewing the India-linked business opportunities in the international markets and expand its presence as new avenues emerge, Kochhar said.
With China's impressive economic growth catapulting their banks into the top global league, India's top private sector lender ICICI Bank's chief Chanda Kochhar has said Indian banks also must aspire to scale up their activities significantly.
ICICI Bank, which has opened its first branch in China, would also keep reviewing the India-linked business opportunities in the international markets and expand its presence as new avenues emerge, Kochhar said.
"For economies like India and China, where banks are the major financiers of growth, the performance of the banking sector is closely linked to the economy.
"China has an exceptional record of consistent high growth of over 10% for three decades which has helped to catapult Chinese banks to a significant size at a global level," Kochhar told PTI in an interview here.
"India is expected to be the fastest growing economy in the medium term. As India grows, Indian banks must also aspire to scale up their activities significantly," she said.
A number of Chinese banks have made it to the world's top banking league, but Indian banks are still not there.
Kochhar, who was here for the opening of ICICI Bank's first branch in China on Saturday, was replying to a question on whether some Indian banks, including ICICI Bank, would be able to join the top global league some time soon.
With a consolidated asset base of US $132 billion, ICICI Bank is India's largest private sector bank and it is present across 17 countries. It already had a representative office in China, which it had opened over 10 years ago in 2003.
The bank's international book accounts for about one-fourth of its assets.
To another question on whether ICICI Bank would look at entering other countries which have potential for greater trade flows with India, Kochhar said, "The Bank continues to review India-linked business opportunities and expand our presence as new avenues emerge."
"The Bank continues to calibrate its global presence as per its India-linked strategy. We have had a presence in China since over a decade through our representative office, which can now been be scaled up further through the branch to take advantage of the growing linkages between the two countries," she said.
ICICI Bank's global footprint consists of subsidiaries in the UK and Canada, branches in the US, China, Singapore, Bahrain, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Qatar and Dubai International Finance Centre, and representative offices in UAE, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. The bank's UK subsidiary has established branches in Belgium and Germany.
Asked about the plans to bolster ICICI Bank's domestic business to cater to growing international ambitions of Indian companies, Kochhar said, "We are an Indian bank offering globally-benchmarked products and services."
Talking in detail about ICICI Bank's international business strategy, Kochhar said, "ICICI Bank has an international presence for quite some years through its representative offices, branches and banking subsidiaries."
"The Bank's international banking strategy is to focus on capturing trade and investment flows with India and the rest of the world as well as being the preferred bank for NRIs in key global markets."
On repatriation of funds from its UK and Canada arms, the ICICI Bank chief said that the banks keeps looking at optimising its capital in each market as per business needs, and the repatriation of capital from our subsidiaries in UK and Canada has been part of its strategy to optimise the capital in these subsidiaries.
"Both these subsidiaries continue to have strong reserves and a high capital adequacy even after the capital repatriation," she said.
On exit from Russia, Kochhar said the sale of the banking subsidiary in Russia "facilitated an exit from a market with limited growth opportunities and will help us redeploy the capital for optimum returns".
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