The Banker And The Boom: Why Jamie Dimon Is In Mumbai This Week

Jamie Dimon first came to India around 2005. The JPMorgan Chase office then, he said, was "an old building in downtown Mumbai."

"When I first came to India, around 2005, our office was an old building in downtown Mumbai. The elevator barely held three people. Back then, we did research on about 20 companies with 10 investment bankers. Today we have over 55,000 people in India critically involved in engineering, cyber, AI, and a full range of services that support the US and global operations," Dimon told TOI, last year.

Two decades on, the JPMorgan Chase chairman and chief executive is back in the city. Dimon is in Mumbai for the bank's 11th annual India Conference, which opened on September 21 and runs through September 22. JPMorgan said the gathering would draw more than 1,000 global investors, corporate executives and policymakers.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met Dimon in Mumbai on September 21 during the conference, the finance ministry said in a post on X. "Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., interacted with FM Sitharaman during the JP Morgan India Conference in Mumbai," the ministry said.

Dimon is also scheduled to meet executives from India's top conglomerates. Reliance Industries told stock exchanges that its executives would participate in one-on-one investor meetings at the conference on September 21, while representatives of other large firms including Nestle India and Tata Steel were also expected to take part, Bloomberg reported.

The Fight For India's Deal Boom

JPMorgan is pushing deeper into India at a moment when the country has become one of Asia's busiest fundraising markets. In 2025, the bank won the top spot in India's equity offerings — its first time at the summit in several years — displacing domestic heavyweight Kotak Mahindra Capital. Indian companies raised nearly $55 billion from listings, share placements and block trades that year, Bloomberg data showed.

The lead did not hold. Kotak reclaimed the top spot in the first half of 2026, with JPMorgan slipping to 11th place, Bloomberg league-table data showed. Goldman Sachs and HSBC have also been climbing the rankings, and Japanese financial firms are gaining ground.

Rahul Badhwar, JPMorgan's senior country officer for India, told Bloomberg via email ahead of Dimon's visit that the bank sees "significant opportunities across cross-border M&A, innovation economy, manufacturing, healthcare, consumer, financial services and technology."

"As Indian companies continue to expand globally and multinational companies deepen their presence in India, demand for strategic advice, financing and capital markets expertise is only increasing," Badhwar added. Badhwar joined JPMorgan from HSBC earlier this year.

Dorothee Blessing, co-head of Global Investment Banking at JPMorgan, told Bloomberg that the firm also sees "inbound private equity looking to invest in the region, sovereign wealth funds looking to invest."

India As A Base, Not A Branch

The India Dimon returned to this week is a very different operating environment from the one he described to The Times of India. JPMorgan employs around 60,000 people across global capability centres in several locations, covering quant research, data science and cloud computing, making India one of the bank's biggest outposts outside the United States.

Last year, Dimon had said that he expects the Indian stock market — worth around $5 trillion at the time — to reach $20 trillion over the next 20 years. "This enormous growth mirrors what we see across other companies and sectors, like Tata and TCS," he had said.

He has also praised the reform agenda under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling Aadhaar "an unbelievable achievement" and GST reforms "excellent." "So, I think, the reforms here are excellent, and the fact that your prime minister was able to get them done shows strong leadership," Dimon had said, adding that India's 6% growth could continue for 20 years with education and infrastructure investment.

On the geopolitical front, Dimon has described India as a "natural friend of America." "I don't think we need to ask you to align; we should extend our hand, build relationships," he had said.

Building For The Next Decade

JPMorgan's India expansion is not limited to advisory work. The bank is constructing what will be Asia's largest global capability centre in Mumbai's Powai, a 2 million square feet campus with capacity for around 30,000 employees, according to an earlier report by Business Standard. Brookfield Properties signed a 20-year built-to-suit lease for the project, which is expected to be completed by 2029.

The bank is also hiring. In July 2026, JPMorgan announced plans to recruit around 1,000 technology professionals for its India GCCs, focusing on cloud architecture, cybersecurity and AI data pipelines, even as AI has reduced staffing needs in some functions globally.

In payments, JP Morgan Payments has partnered with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to provide real-time foreign exchange rates for cross-border UPI transactions across multiple currencies. "This collaboration reduces friction in cross-border payments and connects clients to UPI's expanding reach," Guhaprasath Rajagopal, Head of India Payments at JP Morgan Payments, said in a statement on the bank's website.

The bank has also expanded into Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, or GIFT City. A JPMorgan spokesperson told Bloomberg that London-based JPMorgan Securities Plc had received a licence from the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) to set up a branch trading equities, derivatives and other financial instruments for clients based outside India. The move made JPMorgan the latest global bank to take advantage of the low-tax hub, Bloomberg reported.

What The Bank Expects Next

Paul Uren, Head of Investment Banking for Asia Pacific at JPMorgan, told CNBC TV18 that India is entering an important phase for equity capital markets, with several large IPOs being marketed and more companies from consumer, healthcare and technology sectors expected to list over the next year.

"This will most likely be a record year for the investment banking industry globally," Uren told CNBC TV18, adding that "here in Asia, we expect it to be a record year that will exceed the levels of 2021."

Uren also pointed to Sun Pharma's overseas acquisition as an example of Indian companies pursuing global expansion. "We advised on the Sun Pharma deal, which I believe is the largest outbound M&A deal from India," he told CNBC TV18.

Abhinav Bharti, Head of India ECM at JPMorgan, told CNBC TV18 that India's capital-raising volumes have moved into a different league. "We were a market that used to raise about $30 billion a year. The peak was $40 billion in 2020-21, $72 billion in 2024 and $68 billion in 2025. This year, I think we'll still be above $60 billion," Bharti said, adding there is "no reason for us to believe we will not surpass last year's number."

India accounted for about 20% of Asia-Pacific equity capital-markets volumes in 2025, with companies raising about $68 billion, according to JPMorgan. The country also recorded its highest annual number of large equity offerings of more than $1 billion.

The Regulatory Cloud

JPMorgan's expansion has run alongside regulatory scrutiny. India's markets regulator lifted a trading ban on Copthall Mauritius Investment, a JPMorgan entity accused of manipulating stock prices during the country's new closing-auction session, after it deposited around ₹2.96 crore ($311,230) required by the regulator. Copthall remains barred from participating in the closing auction while the investigation continues.

JPMorgan has not publicly commented on the allegations. The Mauritius unit is separate from JP Morgan India Pvt, the firm's local subsidiary, and the order against the offshore entity does not directly impact JPMorgan's activities in India, which are mostly conducted through its local unit.

What The Visit Signals

Dimon's Mumbai stop comes as JPMorgan expands in a market that has become one of Asia's largest sources of equity issuance, and as foreign banks compete for a larger share of Indian dealmaking, with companies tapping overseas investors, private-equity funds and sovereign wealth funds.

The bank that once had 10 investment bankers in a cramped Mumbai office, now has 55,000 people across the country.

As Uren said, "This is a very exciting time for the Indian IPO market because there are a number of very large and prominent IPOs that are out there being marketed at the moment."