State Bank India's net profit for the past four years has been higher than the cumulative profit earned over the previous 64 years, the state-run lender’s chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara has said.

The country’s largest bank has earned a net profit of Rs 1.63 lakh crore in the last four years compared to Rs 1.45 lakh crore for the 64 years before that, Khara told reporters in what would be his last post-earnings interaction.

Khara, who took over as chairman of the bank on 7 October 2020, retires on 28 August upon turning 63. After his initial three-year term, he got an extension for a year in October 2023 or till he turns 63.

When he assumed office, SBI’s yearly profit stood at Rs 14,000 crore. This has now gone up to Rs 17,000 crore per quarter, Khara said.

The bank’s per employee productivity has also jumped to a record high. Under Khara’s time, the per employee share in the profit grew nearly six times from Rs 5.79 lakh to Rs 30 lakh.

Khara’s ambitious target of taking SBI to an annual net profit of Rs 1 lakh crore, however, could not be achieved. But he is confident that the bank would achieve this in the current financial year.

SBI on Saturday reported a net profit of Rs 17,035 crore for the fiscal first quarter ended 30 June 2024, marginally up from Rs 16,884 crore in the April-June quarter of 2023-24.

Khara, however, rued the fact that the bank is being undervalued by the market. “I am not happy. How can I be happy? We are not getting our right value, look at the other players," he said. 

SBI has huge strengths like its branch network of over 22,000, a strong brand recall, substantial balance sheet comfortable liquidity buffers and future growth potential, he added.

According to Khara, the average balance in SBI’s savings accounts is three times higher than that of its nearest competitor. This has increased to Rs 17 lakh crore in June 2024, from Rs 12 lakh crore in March 2020, he added.

The lender is upgrading its second generation mobile banking application, YONO 2.0, and will soon launch a beta version for testing.

"YONO 2.0 may not be released all at once; it will be rolled out incrementally," Khara said.