*HSBC’s rewired India playbook seems to be visible in full action with the latest development.* The bank had 50 branches across India in 2016 when it decided to shut down 24 of those branches. And now, 9yr later, it’s set to undo it all, with a specific focus. Let me explain. .. *HSBC India, the Indian arm of a London-headquartered multinational bank has now received RBI’s nod to launch 20 new branches in 20 cities.* And if you look at the kind of cities these are, you would basically see names like Faridabad (my city), Ludhiana, Indore, Lucknow, Amritsar, Bhopal, Vadodara etc! The game is all about going to Tier-2 cities which are seeing a burst of wealth with the emergence of new affluent HNIs and UHNIs. And this is all in line with the bank’s changed focus on India which was announced last year. .. *What was that changed focus?* Well, it released a report on the growing number of India’s wealthy. And in that, it had projected the number of ultra HNIs in India to grow by at least 50% by 2028 (basically in 4yrs). Delving deeper, it also elaborated how a good number of these UHNIs will not be emerging from the same old metro cities, but from the Tier-2 bastions. And building a case around all of that, HSBC India had announced a renewed and special focus on wealth management for India’s rich as the core area of growth going ahead. And this is where the latest branch expansion comes in. .. *And it’s not just HSBC India.* Take Axis Bank’s case. It used to run its private banking business out of 27 cities. And in September last year (~4 months back), in one go, they launched a presence unit in 15 more Tier-2 cities, taking the total to 42. This included places like Raipur, Patna, Meerut, Belgaum, Jodhpur and Gandhidham etc. .. *And same is the case across the board.* SBI, Standard Chartered, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank are all betting huge on helping the wealthy of this country manage their wealth, and providing them access to every financial tool in existence, with ease. And not just these giants. This is driving up opportunities for all sorts of entities - PMS firms, VCs, PE giants, multi-family offices, startups looking for angel investors, and so on and on! Did you know this? .. *Support my work:* https://t.ly/SUPPORTjay *Check my work with:* - 3.1k+ on Decoding The Dragon (https://t.ly/chnwj) - 2.7k+ on Deepdives with Jay (https://t.ly/dwj) - 2.1k+ on BharatNama (https://t.ly/bwj) Best, Jayant Shilanjan Mundhra