Arundhati Bhattacharya watches a lot of Netflix. “It can be any web series,” she says. Her favorite now is Sullivan’s Crossing, a warm series centering on neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan, who flees a scandal in Boston to her rural hometown in Nova Scotia. A welcome break in light of the difficult task Bhattacharya has set for herself, which is to evolve Salesforce into a force to reckon with in the digital world. Before joining Salesforce as Head of South Asia, she was Chairman of State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest bank.
From her first day of professional work in 1977 with SBI, this English literature graduate, who spent her formative years in Bhilai and then Bokaro, has never taken the safe path. After four decades with SBI, she feels equally comfortable in the world of AI-driven CRM.
A collection of small and large things
In the lives of most professionals, there are a few situations that make a difference. For Bhattacharya, that was a mission in Kharagpur, when she captained a team for the first time. Her boss was in Burdouane, 130 kilometers away, and in a world without cell phones, it was an amazing experience. Decisions had to be made quickly by the person on the ground.
“I encountered a strong union branch, and that taught me a lot about negotiation,” she says, sitting in her office in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla complex. “I learned how to do a lot with limited resources.” She later moved to the US for a spell in New York and made the “very difficult” decision to bring her daughter back home for a year. At that point, her aunt was a great source of support. “I still don’t know if I made the right decision.”
He then took over as Managing Director of the new companies based in Mumbai. “Opening a new business in a public sector bank is not easy, but it turned out to be the most productive period of my life,” she says. On the one hand, Bhattacharya had to contend with a new set of regulatory bodies. “Till then, it was just the Reserve Bank of India. Now, for the private equity fund, I had to talk to Sebi and RBI, and for general insurance, IRDAI; and to activate the fund management company, I also interacted with PFRDA,” he said.
This set her up for other new assignments, including SBI Capital Markets. “The name SBI has opened a lot of doors,” she says. “But once you step out of the bank, it’s different.” Admitting that it came as a “rude shock”, she says even for the government, it represents SBI Cap and not SBI. However, nothing deterred her, and she used this mission as a training field.
Bhattacharya says one should always grab the opportunity to head an organization regardless of its size. “It’s an invaluable lesson, and you can’t get it even if you’re a managing director. Unless you’re the chairman of the board, it’s not possible.”
Adults
In October 2013, Bhattacharya moved to the corner office at SBI. The best is yet to come. Reaching the top is a proud moment, although she’s a bit philosophical about it. “It gets a bit lonely, so it’s important to keep your friends close,” she says. “A lot of people will tell you what you want to hear, but you should have a group of close friends to tell you the truth.” Growing in this role also means being open-minded. Bhattacharya narrates how one of her managing directors gave her useful advice. “When you start a conversation or make a point, you should be the last to speak. If you speak first, others may not have an opinion.”
“If someone has a point of view on a topic, I have to be open enough to listen to it,” she says. “If that point of view is reasonable, then I have to change my position.”
These skills were put to good use during the merger of SBI with five associate banks and Bharat Mahila Bank. She says it was not a popular decision. The team was not very comfortable with the move. “It was a huge undertaking, and these six banks combined were bigger than the second-largest bank at the time. You were merging a really big bank into yourself, and that too in six parts, all in one day,” she says.
There was more than one logical reason for the merger. Bhattacharya says it doesn’t make sense for one entity to own six banks. “We were undermining each other. There was duality on so many levels.” Example: Three floors in a multi-storey building occupied by three SBI banks.
Bhattacharya recalls hearing about the potential merger when she joined the bank. That was decades ago. “I thought it was time and I went for it,” she says. It was important to ensure that the client did not face any obstacles. Bhattacharya remembers someone who had an account with State Bank of Mysore and used online banking on the day of the merger. “He wrote to me that the experience had been smooth and he was very happy with the result.”
According to Deepak Parekh, former chairman of HDFC, SBI has a history of competent presidents. “A lot of credit has to go to the training system and the way promotions and secondments are decided. The foundation you get there is among the best in the country,” he says. Bhattacharya was the first woman to hold this senior position in SBI. Under her leadership, SBI has followed discipline and become a formidable force, evident in its impressive financial numbers and rising share prices, says Parekh. “Credit was given only when there was a strong case. Arundhati is a very strong person and she always stood her ground,” he says.
Parekh says the challenge must be viewed in the context of workforce issues and subsidiaries that are not performing well. “In addition, they were located in different geographical areas and each had its own culture. This whole process, with its many challenges, was handled in an exemplary manner,” he adds.
Another big challenge was demonetisation, which Bhattacharya described as “ridiculous”. At 2:30 pm on November 8, 2016, she received a call from the office of the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a meeting. The heads of other banks also joined in, and it became clear that something big was unfolding. “Eventually, we were able to recognize it with the rest of the nation,” she says. She focused her attention on execution and working with a calm head.
Another focus was digital. “The power that she brought to the table and the ability to do things in an error-free manner was evident. It was clear that the future was going to be digital.”
“We were at a turning point. Technology had to be adopted but the old mindset was a challenge,” says Sunil Srivastva, who was then deputy general manager (digital banking and corporate strategy).
At her request, the presence of senior officials, including independent directors, off-site in Lonavala, set things in motion. The brightest minds from Microsoft, McKinsey, BCG, Gartner, Oracle, etc. were also present at the event. “There was a lot of discussion about the digital future of the bank,” says Srivastava, who also recalls that it was perhaps the first time the entire team had traveled by bus. The effort paid off and the board quickly gave the green signal for the highest ever technology spending by the bank up to that point. “Being involved on the board has made a big difference,” he adds. At that point, while core banking had stabilized, the challenge was the inevitability of digital banking where SBI lagged behind. “You weren’t thinking incrementally. Once you got board approval, there was no stopping the transformation.” A lot of the digital “pioneering”, including YONO, was done by Bhattacharya, before Dinesh Khara took it to the next level, Parekh says.
Take the fresh guard
After completing her tenure at SBI in 2017, Bhattacharya spent the next year — also a horticultural sabbatical — giving lectures and attending investor conferences. And not all of this was related to banking. In fact, it was the first lecture at Welham Girls’ School in Dehradun on their annual day. The crowd was a mix of students and alumni. “The principal told me I had to speak in a way that a sixth-grader and also a 70-year-old could understand,” she says. After October 2018, she joined a number of boards of directors and assumed advisory duties.
Completely unexpectedly, during this period, she was approached by a headhunter for a position at Salesforce. “I was told that the organization was still small in India, but had big growth plans. They wanted a head of state,” she says. That was in 2019. Bhattacharya sat on the decision for five to six months. “I was apprehensive about starting a new journey at that age. Plus, this was a completely new field, although the world of IT had always interested me.”
At the end of that year, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff invited her to the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. “He realized that I could not make up my mind and asked me to meet with the team to make the decision.” After detailed conversations with the team, Bhattacharya was relieved, and at the end of the trip, Benioff gave her a copy of his book. “I enjoyed reading the stories of someone who walks the talk. On the flight home, I made up my mind to accept the offer.”
Technology journey
Salesforce is a young organization where most people address Bhattacharya by her first name. “I actually got used to being called Arundhati during my time in New York,” she says. One of the many things that excites her is that IT is a future-facing business. “If you don’t prepare for what lies ahead, you are likely to become irrelevant.”
In many ways, banking and IT are about high-quality customer service. “You have to understand what customers want,” says Bhattacharya. “That includes pain points and commitment to the delivery promise.” It views the current phase as the “democratization of information technology” where there is virtually no barrier to entry. “Before, you needed to know a language or programming or have some area of expertise. There will come a time when we will all have a personal secretary who will be our agent.”
Srivastava says it’s remarkable what Bhattacharya has accomplished despite having no formal training in technology. “Today, you speak the language of technology easily,” he says.
Under her leadership, SBI followed discipline and became a formidable force. Credit was only given when there was a strong case. Arundhati is a very strong person and has always stood his ground.
-Deepak Parikh,Former Chairman of HDFC
Going digital at SBI has clearly helped Bhattacharya run a digital-native organisation. “I have been through the challenge of transforming a traditional bank into a digital platform. This exposure, coupled with the nuances of the customer’s perspective, has made a huge difference,” she says.
Srivastava is a consensus builder, says Bhattacharya. He gives an example of this from the merger of SBI with fellow banks. “The key is coordinating a complex process. Estimating the details of the process across different sectors and getting all stakeholders on the same page was not easy, but once we did, it was seamless.” Vertical heads certainly played their part as well. “But the real power was the person leading the operation. She intervenes only when there is a need,” he says, before adding that Bhattacharya is a “compassionate leader but has a mind of her own.”
Bhattacharya’s journey witnessed many milestones. However, she does not forget the role her mother and aunt played – “they were very strong women” – and how they influenced her. “All my husband cares about is giving me space,” she says. “He never interferes or hinders me.” At 70, her enthusiasm for anything she does is contagious. Of course there is a commitment, but more than anything else, it is a lesson that one should enjoy what one does. It could be running a bank, a tech organization, or just watching a show on Netflix.
@krishnagopalan
