The bank currently has 20 branches and is looking at the possibility of opening another seven or eight branches over the next few years, Mukerjee said. ``It is difficult to put an optimum number on the number of branches we will have, as it is always a very dynamic situation,'' he said.

Mukerjee claimed that with a PLR of 16 per cent, the bank does not load any further on the PLR. ``We have a very real PLR,'' he said.

On the asset side the bank is targeting mid-cap companies, the bank is not lending at all to retail customers, Mukerjee said. ``It is a very conscious decision to be a corporate bank,'' he said. In this pursuit the bank plans to offer the very best of products on the strength of hi-technology, hesaid.

Very soon the bank plans to offer the facility of making excise payments and more mundane payments like electricity bill payments through the use of smart cards. The bank has made substantial investments in technology to provide on-line services to customers, he said.

While the bank currently has an asset portfolio of Rs 1,200 crore, it has a deposit base of Rs 1,900 crore. The bank is currently engaged in efforts to open branches in the richer pockets of semi-urban towns. In the metros the IDBI Bank's branches are competing with the other new banks and foreign banks for customers. According to Mukerjee as the last of the new banks to get off the blocks in November 1995 it does have the problems of the last entrant but feels ``that this is not a crippling handicap.''