How Deepak Parekh & HDFC Pioneered Home Loans In India

Mumbai: The Secret Sauce, the long-form podcast hosted by Mukul Deora, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and entrepreneur, has released a new episode featuring Deepak Parekh, former Chairman of HDFC.

The episode opens with a simple truth about India’s past. For decades, salaried Indians bought homes only after retirement, using lifetime savings. Long-term home loans were not part of the country’s financial vocabulary. Housing finance, as an institution, did not exist in any meaningful way. That is the world Mr Parekh walked into when he joined HDFC in 1977: “The method of buying a house was you work all your life, you retire, you buy a house…. Now our average age is Mid-30s…. You get a job, work for five years, you save a little, put down payment and you borrow.”

Looking back, he describes those early days without nostalgia or drama. “It was a startup when startups were never heard of,” he says. The organisation had a handful of people. The idea was untested. And the belief that ordinary working families could borrow responsibly over long periods was widely doubted.

The scepticism was not subtle. When HDFC went public in 1978–79, the market’s response was brutal. “The IPO bombed... It failed miserably. And we lost money. We didn’t pay dividends for two years,” Mr Parekh recalls. Even large institutions were saying, “Are you crazy? This is never going to work.” And, from a failed IPO, he built a $150bn/Rs.1.4 lakh crore company- one of the world's largest banks.

Mr Parekh returns repeatedly to the idea that institutions are not built just by hard work, but by ethical consistency. “There’s no softer pillow to sleep on to put your head on than a clear conscience,” he says, before adding the line that anchors his entire philosophy: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, but five minutes to ruin it.”

In the conversation, ethics is not positioned as idealism. It is positioned as infrastructure. Mr Parekh speaks about decisions that hold up under pressure, about refusing to compromise even when saying no is inconvenient, and about why integrity cannot be selective. Asked what a young professional’s personal code should be, he says: “It should be integrity, transparency, honesty. These should be non-negotiable.”

Hosted by Mukul Deora, The Secret Sauce episode is not a highlight reel of success. It is an insightful account of how India’s housing finance system was built before it was popular, before it was profitable, and before it was obvious.

The episode is available on all major podcast platforms.

Full Podcast - https://youtu.be/94GdYSXCI30?si=W9KyTCbmuwsL5wqW