A country has its own timeline. So Nepal’s time will also come. It will not be pretty, it will not be painless, but we must wait and we mustn’t lose hope.  

Mega Bank is performing very well among all the new commercial banks. Can you explain the reason behind this success?

The primary reason, I truly believe, is people. Unfortunately, a lot of other businesses, even in other fields, invest a lot in buildings, computers, but they hesitate to invest in people. They say: “Why should we invest in people after paying them salaries.” But it is not the building or computers that make money or that make Mega Bank Mega. It is the people.

If you look at it at the national level, Nepal is not a poor country. Our mud is no different than the mud of Japan or California or Korea. It is us and what we have done with this country which makes us different.

The same holds true for Mega Bank. In these three years, the difference has been the people, starting with 1,219 promoters and our 14 founders who had this vision to establish a different sort of financial institution where financial inclusion is the primary objective along with profitability. Once it was set up with that vision, I came on and the team followed to implement that vision. To a large extent we have been successful. I can say that now, after our IPO that go overwhelming response, that the public’s equation seems to be right with Mega Bank.

What is the future plan of Mega Bank?      

We have just signed with NEPSE to get our shares listed. As the founder CEO of Mega Bank, it is my responsibility to see that all the phases, from pre-operating to the listing, are completed because that is my primary objective. I am building the foundation of this bank on which this bank will hopefully continue to grow for hundreds of years.

So, in the short term, it is the listing which comes on Sunday. After that the market will determine the price.

On the business side, this year our focus will continue to be on SME and micro lending as our vision is halo to hydro. Due to the political instability there isn’t much happening in the hydro front, but there’s a lot happening in the SME space and the micro space. That is where we want to be, and not only through the bricks and mortar branches but also through our branchless banking network.

Mega Bank is doing exceptionally well in the branchless banking area. What is the vision behind this branchless banking?

As I said, we are different right from our roots and we have financial inclusion in our DNA. To do what we want to do if we follow what Banijya Bank and Nepal Bank did 20 years back and open a branch in every village, it will be a disaster because the only way micro lending will work is if you can bring the cost down. So we did two things.

First, we invested in people. Anil Shah is not a micro banker neither is he an agricultural banker. So we got a person who is a micro banker with extensive experience in the area. He has got a team of people from microfinance institutions and cooperatives who know the business. As I said it, it’s all about the people.

Second, we sat together to find out what would work better and we came to the conclusion that it hinges on technology. So the first success was we got the right people and the second was to get the right technology. We asked our partners what they need to do branchless banking and they said first they needed paper to print receipt for cash transactions. Second, they said their customers could not read and write. So we got a machine that recognized them by fingerprint and also the machine talks in Nepali while informing people about the amount they have deposited or withdrawn.

They are happy. They said we don’t only need an account to deposit money, we also need loans. This was the critical difference between our microfinance and others. Everyone told them about opening account for deposit, no one told them anything about loans. We offered loans and today we have thousands of customers with over 60 crore lent out already in the micro space.

The people, the technology and the time we took to understand the customers. These people don’t need auto loan, apartment loan or education loan. They need money to raise goats, grow tomatoes and set up fisheries. So we need to know how to devise products that are profitable to us and affordable for them. That is the secret of Mega’s micro.                       

You got a huge response for your IPO. What are you going to do to retain that public trust in future?

Let us be clear that the primary reason for anyone making investment is return. People have put money in Mega Bank not because it is a social organization and they wanted to donate. Our primary focus, therefore, is to be able to give a good return that is comparative to our peer group or better than our peer group.

Secondly, the trust came because of the people, not only Anil Shah but the entire Mega team, our board. So all of us must maintain the trust we have earned. People shouldn’t say that look they said they would be doing halo to hydro and now all they are doing is LC and trading. We want to make sure that the vision we put forward is the vision we deliver.

Third, we want to show through our actions that we are slightly different. We do what everybody else does but along with that we do things differently and we do different things altogether.

What can shareholders expect from Mega Bank this year?

We work to deliver profit. We earned 17 crore profit last year, 7.5 crore before that and 2.5 crore in the year that we started operating. All the profits are waiting in reserve. How much they want to distribute as dividends, it is up to the board to decide. About the possible price of our shares, NEPSE has a range of minimum Rs 114 maximum and maximum Rs 342. The market will determine where it will ultimately fall in this range. Then it is up to the shareholders and their faith in our organization, now and in the future.

Is the latest monetary policy that NRB came up with is favorable for banking sector?

I think you must take monetary policy in context. It is a tool that government uses to support the budget. We are very happy that the budget came on time after many years, and that was a full budget. For those of us who are in the economic space of the country, the constitution is very important, who is in the government is very important, but timely budget is just as important.

In Nepal’s context, the largest spender in our economy is the Nepal Government. The largest entity that takes the largest amount of money from the market -- through taxes, VAT, excise -- is also the Nepal government. When the budget comes on time, the economic wheel continues to move, when it doesn’t, the wheel comes to a halt. And when it comes to a halt, irrespective of whether other businesses are doing well or not, it will have a very big impact on our economy.

So the monetary policy came to support the budget. Though it is not a monetary policy that came with a vision about what we are going to be in 20 years because the government itself is here just for the elections. But like all other monetary policies, I can’t say everything is perfect, but on the whole I am very positive towards it.

You are not only the most successful CEO of Nepal but also the most approachable one? How do you manage to be successful as well as approachable?

I think it is about priorities. Some people say that they have no time to do this or that. Time and priorities are like money. If you have a thousand rupees, it is up to you what you want to do with it. You can buy some shares with it, you can buy drugs with it, or you can go and give it to the poor, it is up to you. But you can never say you don’t have enough money because you’ll never have enough money. You have whatever you have, and you have to make its best use. It is the same with the time.

I am in a new bank and one of my prime responsibility as the CEO of a new bank is to be the face of that bank, to garner confidence in that bank through confidence people have in me. So to achieve that goal I have to be approachable.

Internally or externally, for me to be successful, or for any CEO to be successful, the focus has to be people, be it the friends in the media, customers, shareholders or promoters. If I don’t have time for them and I am just sitting here dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, why do I have hundreds of people in this team. People in this team are counting cash, handling remittance, opening account because that’s their job. My job is doing what we are doing right now, to let everybody know what Mega is all about. I have the full confidence in the team that once you come through the door, you’ll never go anywhere else, because we are the Mega team after all.

Do you have any formal mechanism to stay in touch with your staff and customers?

Yes. But not only the staff and customers, you must also say our shareholders and our promoters. We are not a bank that is owned by 8 people, and 30,000 public shareholders. We have 1219 promoters and 1,45,000 public shareholders.

Let’s talk about our staff first. We have what we call a Mega circular which is a national circular that goes to branch managers, head office, head of departments and to everybody. That’s how everyone gets the message. It goes through email and everyone reads it, so we are all in touch and every one can send back their comment. As you said that I am very approachable, it is so not just externally but internally as well. Anyone in the Mega team can walk in through the door.

The second is customers. They can also send in suggestions, emails through the web. I am one of the few CEOs with mobile phone and email printed on my card. Anyone can take time and come and meet me and give me suggestions. That has worked very well for me.

And with our shareholders and promoters, we again use IT. We have everyone’s email and I am constantly in touch with them through email.  

But communication is a two way process. It is not just that people will come here and get a CEO’s wisdom; you can also tell the CEO what you think. In this process, we are not like America, the UK or Australia where everything is free and frank. But we are slowly getting there and what is helping the process is our young team.

Personally, you and, as an institution, Mega Bank, are the two of you doing anything to build future leadership, to produce, for example, another Anil Shah?

Yes. Internally, those who report to me directly or those who report to them directly get all kinds of support. I believe in delegation. We provide training first, give our staff the skills they need, and then delegate the responsibility and the authority to them along with the accountability.

One of my early managers used to say: “We provide them enough rope. They can build a ladder and climb as high as they want to or build a noose and hang themselves.”

Anybody in the Mega team can walk through the door and say, “Anil Ji I think this is a good proposal.” I’ll look at it and say you are sure… let’s do it. If it is right the team gets the credit for it, if it goes wrong, it is my fault.

On the personal level, a lot of people call me saying they want to talk. I never go to talk to people of my generation or generation that is older than me because my time is limited. I will always go to talk to people even at the 9th and 10th grades, 11th and 12th grades, BBA students, MBA students, Engineering students, Jaycees, youth groups, because I truly believe my contribution is not only to make lots of money to myself and make billions of rupees for this bank’s shareholders, but my responsibility is also towards this country. And for me, this country is the youth. If I can say something that motivates them, that makes them walk down the right path and gives them a ray of hope, I’d be happy to do my part.

But there is something that people should know. If there are many lights in this room, the candle that is burning in that corner will not be noticed by anybody. But if I put off all the lights, suddenly that candle becomes so bright that it fills the room with brightness. I am just a little candle, but there is so much darkness that little candle like us is what our youth is looking up to for some rays of hope.

So my contribution to build future leadership is the interaction with younger generation. The greatest problem with Nepal today is the leadership void. It is so not only in politics, bureaucracy but also in private sector and society.

But among the future generation, there will be tens of thousands of people who are going to be much better leaders than me or any one in my generation. If my generation does not realizes that and make an environment, time will come when they will tell us, I hope, “Enough is enough!”

When I went to Harvard a professor there said everything has a timeline. Our timeline as individuals is short because we live for 70-80 years, therefore, we want to do things little faster. A country’s timeline is a little longer. The example he gave was: Even if you like the food pak choy, you would not like it if it is not well cooked, if it is raw. It not only tastes bad, it also gives you a bad stomach. It is the same with a nation. It takes time for that environment building. Maybe I have seen the environment that this nation requires, but the nation hasn’t seen it, it will take time and I must be patient and wait and see the nation suffer.

But the time will come. I am a Nepali, I know my country -- maybe better than most -- and I know that time will come. It will not be pretty, it will not be painless, but we must wait and we mustn’t lose hope.