Mumbai, Aug. 30: Religare Enterprises Ltd scrambled today to put together an advisory board comprising Suman Bery and Kiran Karnik to help the financial services group owned by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh navigate the shoals thrown up by the Reserve Bank of India’s draft guidelines for new banking licences.

Bery is the former director-general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and has been a special consultant to the RBI.

Karnik was the president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) from 2001 to 2008. Later, he was appointed as the chairman of Satyam Computer Services by the government in early 2009 to set the house in order after founder Ramalinga Raju confessed to a Rs 7,500-crore accounting fraud at the country’s fourth largest software exporter.

The advisory panel will help chart Religare group’s banking strategy.

The RBI had said it would discourage promoters with an exposure of more than 10 per cent in terms of assets and revenue to the real estate and broking businesses. Analysts felt the latest conditionality would dim the chances of aspirants such as Religare.

However, Religare has expressed the confidence that it will qualify as it meets the key norms laid out by the RBI.

Religare said the advisory panel would support the management’s efforts in charting out the group’s banking strategy and its application for a new licence under the final guidelines that the RBI would issue later.

“The panel will help the Religare management create a model that is innovative and commercially viable and meets all regulatory guidelines,” chairman and managing director Sunil Godhwani said.

The Religare stock finished lower by over 2 per cent at Rs 415.05 on the BSE amid worries that it might not be able to promote a bank because of the central bank’s stipulation on real estate and broking.

“This effectively scuppers the hopes of Religare Enterprises, Indiabulls Group, and IIFL,” Kashyap Jhaveri and Pradeep Agrawal, banking analysts at Emkay, said in a note after studying the implications of the RBI’s draft guidelines.

Religare said it had no real estate exposure and broking contributed less than 10 per cent to the promoter group’s revenues. Moreover, its existing corporate structure is like a non-operative holding company — a major stipulation that the RBI has laid down for the new banking licensees.