Arundhati Bhattacharya: Banker who Moved to IT

India’s leading banker. First woman chief of India’s biggest bank, SBI. Creates a legacy over four years. Retires. Turns independent director on various companies’ boards. Then, you’d expect her to relax and remain in an advisory role. But that’s not Arundhati Bhattacharya’s style. Three years after retiring from SBI, she returned to active duty in April 2020 at, not a bank, but an American software company, as its Chairperson and CEO. It takes gumption to do the unconventional, and Bhattacharya, who now leads San-Francisco-based Salesforce’s presence in India, has given a new meaning to the phrase “shattering the glass ceiling”. Besides doubling headcount within a year, she has focussed on creating synergies between different departments and brought customer service at the centre. With a non-IT background, the perception challenge in the new role was one of the biggest ones for her, “...but I have created a collaborative Salesforce with customers at the centre”. Just like her.