LADY WITH THE LAMP

Arundhati Bhattacharya has shone her light on the banking industry for more than four decades, inspiring millions and helping State Bank of India, and the industry, with HR reforms and digital transformation

- MANISH PANT

THE WORD THAT perfectly describes Arundhati T Bhattacharya's cabin in Salesforce's Mumbai office is immaculate. There are no piles of papers or pending files on her spotlessly clean white desk. From a potted plant in the corner to a picture on the wall, everything is in the right place. The white walls and the all-around neatness manifest the clarity of purpose of the room's occupant. This focussed approach has been the hallmark of the former State Bank of India (SBI) chairman, who is now Chairperson & CEO of Salesforce India, the local entity of the San Francisco-headquartered $26.5-billion enterprise software company. Hence, it is no surprise that the jury of the BT-KPMG Best Banks and Fintechs Survey 2021-22 unanimously decided to confer on her the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Bhattacharya took charge of SBI-the country's largest lender-in 2013 and was the bank's first (and till date only) woman chairman. Her four-year tenure is remembered for the way she transitioned the 217-year-old state-owned lender into a digitalised enterprise. "It was a very well-entrenched organisation that I took over with everything from the power of the chairman, composition of the committees, to the periodicity of the board meetings [being] well-defined. It was also a legacy organisation that had inherited a lot of stuff that probably was in need of being updated to keep up with the changes," says Bhattacharya, 66, between sips of tea.

But it wasn't easy. For example, her efforts at creating a professionally-driven foundation to oversee the spending of 1 per cent of the bank's profits on CSR were rejected thrice by the Reserve Bank of India for the lack of such a provision in The Banking Regulation Act of 1949. "It was with a lot of effort and persuasion that we ultimately got permission for the foundation," she says.