Kolkata, Feb 20 (IANS): West Bengal-based micro-finance firm Bandhan Financial Services (BFS) Friday said it will focus on collecting deposits in the initial years of its operations after it rolls out a bank by September this year.

"As of now, we have an outstanding loan to start the bank which needs to be repaid. In the initial years, our focus will be to collect deposits from the public and repay the loan and thereafter we will start credit operations," the company's chairman and managing director C.S. Ghosh said.

The upcoming bank will have 600 branches across India, mainly in the semi-urban and rural centres with presence in metros and tier 1 cities.

"In Kolkata, we will have 35 branches alone. However, the major focus will be on the rural sector," he said.

The firm has hired 400 experienced banking professionals to roll out operations later this year and has looped in another 3,000 freshers from the non-professional segment.

"We are already strong in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Bihar in the east, apart from Uttar Pradesh and other markets. Now, our focus will be on the south to cover Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala for the banking services," he said.

The micro-finance (MFI) firm has a capital base of Rs.3,200 crore but is unable to take deposits as it flouts the Reserve Bank of India norms.

Asked about lending operations for the rural belt, Ghosh said: "The MFI wing will take care of initial lending activities and once our deposits stable, we will start large scale lending from the bank."

The company received the in-principle approval to start banking operations in April 2014 within a period of 18 months.