The promise of a bank begins with what its customer understands.

I became interested in marketing through the distance between a message and the conversation it created.

Open to

Board appointments
Advisory roles
Speaking invitations

A banking message travels further than the campaign that carries it. Someone remembers a phrase, discusses it at home or asks a branch colleague to explain what it means. The conditions that were visually secondary in an advertisement can become central to that conversation. I lead marketing with that continuation in mind. The work is to create interest through a proposition the bank can explain clearly, while respecting the decisions and responsibilities that belong to product, risk and service teams.

My career began in consumer-finance marketing in April 1994. I joined Naviratha Bank in April 2001 and developed through regional communication, deposits and retail marketing before becoming CMO in April 2020. I now lead seventy-four employees through six direct reports, with forty-eight agency personnel separately. My ₹96 Cr marketing authority for FY2026–27 supports communication and relationship development. It does not give me authority over lending approval, product pricing, treasury or the bank's compliance sign-off.

Naviratha's March 2025 account comprised ₹48,600 Cr of assets, ₹39,200 Cr of deposits and ₹31,800 Cr of advances, with 6,000 employees and 286 branches. Those figures describe the fictional bank's scale. My own record concerns the choices inside its marketing work: which conditions receive attention, how a translated explanation keeps its meaning and when acquisition language stops describing the relationship a customer actually has with us.

Conditions made easier to understand in a selected study

In a 120-person study, sixty participants saw an existing fee explanation and sixty saw a revised version. Twenty-seven in the first group and forty-eight in the second correctly understood the specified condition. I kept that bounded finding attached to the wording decision, without claiming it established every customer's understanding or complete regulatory compliance.

An acquisition account that followed the funded relationship

A ₹2.4 Cr campaign produced 18,000 applications, 6,200 opened accounts and 4,800 accounts funded within thirty days. Only 2,700 met our explicitly defined activity criterion at day ninety. I changed the account to retain those stages and the cost associated with each, rather than use the application total as a complete description of the relationship created.

Language review that examined product meaning

Five of thirty-two selected translated clauses required correction because their meaning had shifted. The revised clauses received independent review before release. I treated that work as part of the proposition, not a finishing task delegated after the main campaign was approved. Customer comprehension remained a separate question from the linguistic review.

Current focus

I am connecting campaign development more closely with the branch conversations it generates. That includes the questions staff receive, the conditions customers struggle to interpret and the time needed for a useful follow-up. I want marketing's account of progress to describe a relationship the operating business recognises, with unresolved questions still visible to the people who can answer them.

Conversations I welcome

I would consider a defined advisory or speaking discussion about banking communication, and a compatible first board contribution after employer consent and relationship review. My proposed availability must fit the actual responsibility. I am interested in work where careful explanation is part of the commercial proposition, rather than an afterthought added to an already fixed message.

Marketing employees

Six direct reports; forty-eight agency personnel separately

₹96 Cr

FY2026–27 marketing authority

Excludes credit decisions, product pricing and treasury

32 years

Marketing experience

Consumer finance and banking, April 1994 onwards

I want the words that attract a customer to remain useful when that person asks a branch colleague what the offer means for them.

Kavya Vardhane

Chief Marketing Officer

Areas of stewardship

Where accountability has been mine.

IBanking propositions people can explain
IIAcquisition measured through the developing relationship
IIILanguage as part of product meaning
IVBranch conversations that change marketing choices

Selected work

Decisions, and what they changed.

Giving a fee condition enough room to be understood

In January 2024, a proposed retail campaign used a short fee explanation that the creative team considered clear and visually economical.

The full account

Following an acquisition campaign to a defined day-ninety relationship

A campaign that began in June 2024 attracted 18,000 applications with ₹2.4 Cr of marketing expenditure.

The full account

III

Reviewing thirty-two translated clauses for the meaning they carried

In February 2025, a branch communication programme prepared selected product explanations in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Kannada.

The full account

In the words of others

Trusted by those who appoint.

Kavya brought the branch explanation into the campaign decision while we could still change the wording. She asked us to address the condition customers misunderstood instead of assuming that another line of small print completed the task.

Nalin VedrakarRetail banking head, Naviratha Bank · fictional colleague

Her acquisition review separated applications from the accounts that remained active under the stated definition. That gave us a more useful discussion about the next allocation, including the work the business still needed to do after opening an account.

Devika VarshenChief executive, Naviratha Bank · fictional colleague

The journal