India's largest private sector lender, ICICI Bank has said that it looking towards the semi-urban and rural India to be its next big market. It will be doing so by increasing its presence in these areas.

Talking in the annual statement of the bank, managing director of the bank, Chanda Kocchar said that the bank is now focusing on enhancing its capabilities to be able to serve the customers that reside in the smaller towns. She also said that ICICI Bank is taking pro-active steps to make formal finance reach out to the people of rural India.

Till now, the bank has gone for aggressive strategies for urban India alone. But it has also given a lot o credit in form of agriculture loans as well. In March 2010, the total advances given by the bank for farming purposes amounted to 17,329 crore.

Now it wants to set up more branches and use its large sales force to go about building the system and the name of the bank in such areas.

Till last year, there were 500 branches of ICICI and the gross non-performing assets in the agriculture and allied services stood at 5.63 per cent.

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