Piyush Gupta on retirement, travelling and birdwatching
After transforming DBS into one of the world’s most admired digital banks, Mr Piyush Gupta traded spreadsheets for soaring peaks, board meetings for bird watching and financial headlines for viral LinkedIn mix-ups.
Since stepping down as CEO on March 28 this year, after 16 influential years, the India-born Singaporean has embraced a richly personal chapter of life marked by plenty of travel, nature, reflection – and even a mistaken identity in Bali that lit up social media.
“For 12 weeks since I retired, I’ve been travelling 10 weeks,” a fit and relaxed Mr Gupta told tabla! with a smile, in a room next to his office at the Singapore Management University. “April in the Himalayas. May and June in Europe – Sicily, then Ireland.”
The 65-year-old’s eyes light up when he speaks about the Himalayas, a region he calls “therapeutic”. He hiked through the remote Kinnaur and Parvati Valleys of Himachal Pradesh, places known as much for their serene beauty as their cultural richness.
“I used to do a lot of trekking in Uttarakhand and Himachal in my younger days. Spending a month there unclogs the system. It’s the best way to clear your brain,” said Mr Gupta, who was born in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, and grew up in New Delhi.
His wife Ruchira joined him on the journey and, for parts of it, close friends went along. “We did 8 to 10km daily hikes,” he said. “It turned out to be a great way to unwind.”
From the Himalayas, Mr Gupta journeyed to Sicily, where his children had rented a villa to celebrate his retirement. Then came a road trip through Ireland and a week with his grandchildren in London
He was also the centre of a Bali story which made him a social media sensation.
Singaporean tour company founder Janney Hujic posted a LinkedIn story about a chance encounter with him at a cafe in Bali. The photo showed a man resembling Mr Gupta.
The caption praised his wisdom and humility. Except it wasn’t Mr Gupta.
He replied: “Sorry to disillusion you. That isn’t me!”.
The man was later identified as Mr Kumar H Subramaniam, a 58-year-old Singaporean living in Bali. He said he told Ms Hujic upfront that he was not Mr Gupta – he’d been mistaken for him before.
The saga took another turn when Ms Hujic claimed the post was uploaded by a rogue social media manager who demanded $5,000 to take it down.
“When I first saw the post, I was actually quite impressed,” Mr Gupta admitted. “I thought, very clever girl. If someone wanted to do a tongue-in-cheek marketing stunt with a lookalike, that was well done. The backlash came only when she got defensive. If she’d owned it, said four days later, ‘Hey, I pulled this off,’ I would have been fine.”
He laughed again and said: “Now it’s become an Internet thing. It’s become a meme.”
Mr Gupta could have stayed on at DBS until 70 like some American CEOs, but he chose to retire at 65.
“There’s no formal retirement age. In fact, the board wanted me to stay. But during Covid, a WhatsApp circulated, purportedly from a nurse in Australia, talking about regrets of the dying. That stayed with me,” Mr Gupta said.
“I told myself – plan your life like everything else. Don’t wait till it’s too late.”
“As you get older, the biggest premium is time. You have a finite amount. So how do you want to use that time. Then you inevitably come to the conclusion that you must be disciplined and create a plan for how you want to use the time. Who knows how much time you have.”
Mr Gupta chairs the Board of Trustees at Singapore Management University and is Chairman of Mandai Park Holdings.
“I love education – that’s why I joined SMU. And Mandai is the best nature platform in Singapore. But, above all, I want to travel. At DBS, long trips were impossible. Now I’m rooted in relationships – with family, with friends – and I finally have the time.”
Next up: birdwatching in Botswana, trekking in Mongolia, and a week in Zambia.
“My calendar is full of places I always wanted to go to. This is why I retired – to finally check off those boxes.”
A lesser-known side of Mr Gupta is his long-standing passion for birdwatching.
“Between age 12 and 17, I was really into birding. I even listed it under ‘Other Interests’ on my CV,” he said. “At my Citibank interview, they grilled me: ‘Why is this relevant to banking?’ I gave them a lot of nonsense about patience and observation.”
He added with a laugh: “If it were today, I’d talk about biodiversity, ESG and birds as the ultimate survivors from the dinosaur era!”
In recent years, birding has re-entered his life. “I go out with regular folks – not finance people. And I love it. It gets me out in nature, meeting a totally different crowd. It’s humbling and joyful.”
Asked if he had done enough at DBS or had more to offer, Mr Gupta was thoughtful.
“There’s always more to do. When I joined, I thought 10 years was good. Then came Covid. Then some tech challenges. So I stayed to see it through. But I believe we broke the back of a lot of big issues – not just tech but culture.”
Mr Gupta is confident about DBS’s future.
“There’s more ahead – Gen AI, token banking – but DBS is ready. We built agility, resilience, momentum. There is wind in the sails.”
