After successfully integrating United Western Bank with itself, IDBI Bank is now eyeing more acquisitions to further scale up its pan-India presence while its organic growth plans include the setting up of 200 new branches.

The public sector bank has already initiated discussions with a few private and public sector banks and hopes to seal an acquisition this fiscal, an official close to the development said, without, however, disclosing the identities of the banks.

"The bank is in serious discussions with a few mid-sized banks. A decision can be expected in the next few months," the official added.

While an acquisition will provide IDBI Bank with a ready branch network, it is simultaneously focusing on organic growth as well and proposes to open 200 branches and an equal number of ATMs this fiscal.

"We are planning to open 200 more branches and 200 ATMs in Fiscal Year 2009. With this expansion, the bank would be in a better position to improve its business growth," the bank's Deputy Managing Director O V Bundellu said.

However, he too declined to divulge the identities of the banks targeted for acquisition. With its present deposit and advances at Rs 72,000 crore and Rs 82,000 crore respectively, IDBI Bank is in a strong position to face competition emanating from its peers, both from the public and private sectors, he said.

"In the retail segment, we have targeted an above 30 per cent growth in both advances and deposits. IDBI has a current customer-base of 20 lakh, which, we plan to augment in the period ahead," the official added.

IDBI Bank is targeting a 20 per cent of its business from retail banking from the present level of 15 per cent by the end of this fiscal, Bundellu said.

Earlier, IDBI Chairman Yogesh Agarwal had told that the bank was eager to seal an acquisition in 2008 and that its targets would be from both the private and public sectors.

"We want to undertake an acquisition this year. We have already commenced talks with a few banks in this regard," Yogesh Agarwal said.

IDBI's Personal Banking Head Sushil Muhnot said the bank was well-equipped to adopt the inorganic growth route, given its prior experiencing in successfully integrating a target bank (United Western Bank).

"We have the experience to successfully execute an acquisition. The bank has an excellent technology platform and would prefer to approach a bank with a good current account, savings account (CASA) base," Muhnot said.

Other factors that would influence the acquisition would be the target bank's branch network, its technology-platform and customer base, he said.

"We will only look at banks that will add value to our already existing offerings," he said.

For the quarter ended March 2008, IDBI Bank had posted a net profit of Rs 244.99 crore, against Rs 213.55 crore in the year-ago period while its profit for Fiscal Year 2008 stood at Rs 729.45 crore as compared to Rs 630.31 crore in the previous fiscal.