Earlier this month ICICI Bank unveiled Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan as its global brand ambassador. Yet even without the endorsement of India’s most bankable actor, ICICI’s global ambitions have come into sharp focus in the past year.

In Canada, for example, two out of three customers clicking on to the bank’s online service are non-Indians, surprising Kundapur Vaman Kamath, the managing director who has led ICICI’s makeover from a slumbering project financier to India’s most aggressive consumer lender. “In Canada, we thought only Indians would click because they knew the brand,” he says.