The third largest private sector lender of the country, Axis Bank will be opening 100 branches in rural areas of the country as a part of its rural banking strategy, said a bank official.

Three branches have already been opened in rural Gujarat and five more will be set up in a week's time, said Shriniwas Dandekar, senior VP of the bank. The five new branches will be located in Dhrol, Vasana, Gadadha, Manvdar and Bagasara.

"These rural forays are besides our normal network expansion plans," he said.

The bank is focusing its expansion mainly in Tier III, IV and V cities having a population in the range of 10,000 to 50,000. With this the bank plans to attain both its objectives of reaching out to the rural population and at the same time bring techmology catered services to their doorstep, said Dandekar.

The current branch network of the bank is 1,200 in the domestic arena along with 4,900 ATMs spread across 680 cities. Also, the bank has overseas presence in Singapore , Hong Kong , Shanghai and Dubai.

"Axis Bank has the largest EDC network, the third largest ATM network in India and also has the fourth largest base of debit cards in the country. Axis Bank has a customer base of over 150,000."

"The market capitalisation of the bank as on November 18 was Rs. 57,558 crores (NSE) which makes it the fourth largest in terms of market capitalization," a spokes person of the bank said.