After graduating from
IIM Ahmedabad in 1971, Kamath started his career with
ICICI (Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India) in the Project Finance division and moved on to different departments to gather experience, including establishing new business lines such as leasing, venture capital, and credit ratings as well as handling general management responsibilities. As part of his general management responsibilities, he initiated and implemented ICICI's computerisation program. Substantial investments in technology from those early years have resulted in systems that are today a competitive advantage for ICICI. Kamath has generally been credited with expanding ICICI's businesses to evolve it into a technology-enabled financial organisation catering to the financial needs of corporate and retail customers. In 1988, Kamath joined the
Asian Development Bank, Manila in their Private Sector department. His principal work experience at ADB was in various projects in China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. He was the ADB representative on the boards of several companies. In May 1996, Kamath returned to ICICI as its managing director and chief executive officer. Kamath was instrumental in expanding the Group's services to the retail customers. He initiated a process of a series of acquisitions of non-banking finance companies in 1996–98 and led the way to the formation of
ICICI Bank. On 2 May 2011, he was appointed as Non-Executive Chairman of the second-largest software exporter,
Infosys Ltd. (earlier Infosys Technologies Ltd.). He currently is a Lead independent director at Infosys after having stepped down from chairmanship to make way for
N. R. Narayana Murthy. He is designated to be non-executive chairman of Infosys Board, effective 11 October 2014. After being appointed as the first chief of the
New Development Bank set up by the BRICS, he went on to step down from this post of Chairman and Independent Director effective 5 June 2015. He is appointed as the Chairman of the newly constituted development finance institution National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development (NaBFID). He is also the Chairman and Independent Director of Jio Financial Services Limited. ==Board membership==