Surat provides rich pickings for Max New York

Talking to Business Standard, Gary Bennett, managing director and CEO of MNYL said, "Surat has the fastest growing market for MNYL in Gujarat. The city has shown a high agent productivity resulting to more than Rs 10 crore new businesses in past one year."

The company has recorded an annual turnover of Rs 79 crore from Gujarat. While the total turnover is Rs 630 crore for the fiscal year 2005-06.

Talking to media during a inauguration function of Vadodara branch of MNYL, Bennett, said, "Gujarat is a very important market for the company as it has 293 percent growth in terms of turnover in financial year 05-06 compared to last year." MNYL has six branches and one bank assurance partnership with Kalupur Commercial Co-operative Bank in Gujarat.

"We are aggressively pursuing to make a geographical move by reaching out to the customer rich spots in the country," he informed.

"We already have identified some of cities where we plan to foray soon." he added.

However, he declined to divulge the name of the places. He informed that MNYL had planned to open 36 branches each for next three year to come.

When asked about the company's plan to take up a major stake in any of the Indian bank, he said, "The work is in progress as we are in talks with two to three major banks."

Referring to the question of picking up stake of a bank, he said, "It's quite logical to make long term relation and investment."