History
The bank was founded on 3 December 1993 as UTI Bank, created inside the Unit Trust of India, which was then a government entity and the largest mutual fund manager in the country. Its registered office was in Ahmedabad and its corporate office in Mumbai. It was promoted jointly by the administrator of UTI, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, the General Insurance Corporation, National Insurance Company, The New India Assurance Company, The Oriental Insurance Corporation and United India Insurance Company.[1]
The first branch opened on 2 April 1994 in Ahmedabad, inaugurated by Manmohan Singh, then the finance minister. The early bank was a corporate and treasury institution more than a household name, and it grew through the 1990s on the back of its promoter institutions' balance sheets.[1]
In 2001 the bank agreed to merge with Global Trust Bank, a private sector lender, but the Reserve Bank of India withheld approval and the deal collapsed. Three years later the regulator placed Global Trust Bank under moratorium and supervised its merger with Oriental Bank of Commerce, which settled the question of who would absorb it. Regulators rather than shareholders decided that outcome.[1] [16]
The bank listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005, opened its first overseas branch in Singapore in 2006 and followed with an office in Shanghai the same year. In 2007 it opened a branch in the Dubai International Financial Centre and branches in Hong Kong, building the international footprint that still defines its corporate banking offer.[1] [6] [7]
On 30 July 2007 UTI Bank changed its name to Axis Bank. The change was about brand rather than ownership, but it mattered: by then the bank had outgrown the mutual fund that had given it its name, and a lender competing for retail customers wanted a name of its own. The Livemint report on the change recorded it plainly.[1] [4]
Shikha Sharma was appointed managing director and chief executive in 2009 and ran the bank through the expansion years, a period in which her own pay and the bank's retail push were both closely reported. She retired at the end of 2018, and Amitabh Chaudhry took over on 1 January 2019.[1] [11] [12]
In March 2014 the Indian government sold a 9 per cent stake out of its total 20.7 per cent holding, part of the wider programme of exiting public holdings in banks. In 2017 the bank bought Freecharge, a digital payments platform, for about 385 crore rupees, and in 2023 it completed the acquisition of Citibank India's consumer banking business for 12,325 crore rupees, which was the largest single purchase in its history.[1] [9]
The most recent chapter is transactional rather than structural. In 2025 the bank partnered with J.P. Morgan to provide real time US dollar payment capabilities to commercial clients in India, and on 30 September 2026 it became an initial launch partner for Apple Pay in India, putting it among the first Indian issuers on the wallet at launch.[1]
