THE APPLIED ECONOMIST

DEBADATTA CHAND IS HELPING BANK OF BARODA FIND ITS MOORINGS WITH A POTENT RETAIL AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MIX.

- BY V. KESHAVDEV

WHEN DEBADATTA CHAND pronounces the name of his hometown, B-a-l-a-n-g-i-r (Balangir), he smiles gently, as if correcting a long-standing misunderstanding around the name of this small district in western Odisha, a place he calls home where "government service," during his growing years, was seen as the ultimate career goal.

Having grown up in a middle-class household—his father was a state government employee, his mother a homemaker, and a few uncles were in banking—Chand's career path was unidirectional. “Nothing was planned. You just applied for competitive exams... wherever you got through... that’s where you went,” says Chand, who took over the top job at Bank of Baroda in July 2023.

A graduate in agricultural engineering from Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, Mumbai beckoned in 1994, landing him his first job at the Stock Holding Corporation of India. But he soon found his true calling in finance, joining Allahabad Bank later that year.

Chand soon found himself drawn to treasury. “When I started in ’94, treasuries were small units. The market had just opened up after the Narasimham Committee reforms. We were learning everything, right from government securities, money markets, understanding risk and so forth,” recalls Chand, sitting out of his 9th floor office at the bank’s HQ in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex.

His early years in treasury taught him to see banking as a real-time construct, where every macroeconomic event had a concurrent impact. “I realised early that treasury work makes you look at the economy as a whole. I call myself an applied economist: not by degree, but by practice,” says Chand.

CHAND’S EARLY YEARS in banking were shaped by what he calls the “functional backbone” of the business: risk, treasury, and credit. From the dealing rooms of Allahabad Bank to his stint at SIDBI learning project finance, he built what he terms a “360° understanding” of banking.