For the financial year ending March 2025, SBI's total earnings were $9.2 billion. Therefore, IndianOil is the third most significant corporate player, after Reliance Industries and ONGC, and is listed by net profit in the global rankings. The higher earnings are due to the bank's greater use of digital services.
YONO, an online platform introduced by SBI in 2017, also helped grow the business. Although SBI's app may not attract many customers, it significantly contributes to its rise in earnings. The company benefits from YONO's (74 million users and 10 million daily login users) role in loan disbursements and savings.
YONO has made a difference, yet not all bank customers sign up for its digital services. Over half a billion people use SBI, but many still go to branches to bank. Many people have several such accounts with only a small amount of money and little use. This is why companies work less effectively, leading to a decrease in profits.
According to Rajendra Srivastava, YONO has managed to be very profitable while its customers have relatively small profit margins.. He felt that with digital services, it was not necessary to maintain almost 20,000 branches and employ over 220,000 people. Srivastava mentioned that the benefits of digital public infrastructure, such as Aadhaar and UPI, include improved access to banking for both rural and urban people.
The SBI recorded record profits, but its price-to-book (P/B) ratio of 1.4 is lower than that of private banks, which have P/B ratios of 2.8 and 3.3, respectively. Analysts believe this difference is due to challenges with how the systems work and how much they cost.
Srivastava advised the bank to invest in encouraging more people to use YONO and scale down its use of unnecessary infrastructure. Making operations more efficient and focusing on digital services could cut costs, provide greater customer benefits, and raise the bank's share price. He concluded that SBI may drive the transformation of the public sector by tying profitability, digital services, and flexible operations together.