Cash to cloud
Former SBI chief Bhattacharya talks to Pavan Lall about her transformation to leading a software firm, work-life balance and why genius often borders on insanity
Last year, when Arundhati Bhattacharya, former chairperson of State Bank India (SBI), India’s largest bank, messaged a group of friends to say she was now the chief executive officer (CEO) of software-as-a-service (Saas) company Salesforce India, they thought she was pranking them. It was, after all, the first of April.
“I received a lot of smiley faces and ‘ha ha’s and I had to message them back to say it was no joke,” Bhattacharya tells me as we sit down to chat at Ming Yang at Taj Lands End in Bandra, Mumbai.
Her journey since has been welldocumented as she made a daunting leap from a public sector bank to an American cloudbased software company. But those who know her will tell you that she was all about technology and digital even when at SBI. That said, in her new role, Bhattacharya, 66, has almost a different persona. For one, she agrees to meet me outside her office, she smiles a whole lot more, and without the bureaucracy and red-tape restraining her, is more candid. Dressed in a red-black sari, accessorised with an ethnic Bengali necklace, she’s all smiles and looks fitter than when I met her years ago.
She’s also kept her nose to the grindstone. Salesforce headcount has gone up from 2,500 in 2020 to 7,500 in 2022; and some of the key customer wins, according to the company, include HDFC Ltd, Asian Paints, Tata Cliq, Mahindra & Mahindra and Titan.
The order for the day is clear soup for her, crab soup for me, steamed pomfret, Chinese stir-fried greens, egg-fried rice and an asparagus-mushroom concoction for the table.
How was the lockdown for her? “One upside was health, which improved substantially, though it’s going down again. Because of travel, it has deteriorated hugely as regular meals and exercise are not feasible,” she says. “The second was my autobiography, which I wrote during that time. And the third was that I truly reconnected with my family.”
There were challenges, too. For example, because one is at home and working, one can be expected to work all the time, she says. Salesforce, however, was exemplary in that “they are truly respectful of your time,” she adds. “That’s something Indian companies should also start adopting.”
Soup arrives and we get started.
Would she say that SBI had work-life balance? “No, not in the bank,” comes the candid reply. “When I went to New York on posting, the last consortium meeting I held was at 4:30 in the evening, and then I took an 11:30 pm flight out of Kolkata to New York with my year-old daughter and my aunt, a senior citizen. So that’s the kind of work-life balance we have had — which is, none at all. It’s not fair,” she says.
Salesforce, she adds, is different. “You know, my secretary blocks time on my calendar for packing the day before I’m travelling. That’s when you understand she is not expecting me to do my packing on my personal time. I think it really helps to de-stress.”
Bhattacharya’s husband was one of the founding professors of the computer science and engineering department at IIT Kharagpur. “When I was posted to the US, he came for a short vacation, and then got a job with Dow Jones. And then he asked IIT for a sabbatical, which they refused to give. He was a little cheesed off because IIT had given it to others. So he chose to leave,” she says, and with a smile adds, “He says he did it for me, but believe me he did it for himself.”
Lunch arrives. Our conversation moves to things that help her relax. Art is one. She visited Amsterdam recently and went to the Van Gogh Museum for the second time. “I am amazed at his range and power, and can stand for hours in front of his paintings,” she says. “Not just the classics, but also his works in the Japanese style, which are so different from his sunflowers… And look at some of his farmhouse paintings or his Wheatfield with Crows — all so different.”
Van Gogh did see the world in a very different way, she says, which is why, perhaps, they say there is a thin line between genius and insanity.
We bite into our Chinese green vegetables, which are surprisingly good, in pensive silence.
During her tenure ats bi,bh attach ar ya was credited with some key achievements that includedpreparing the ground for a merger with associate banks, making the bank digitally up to speed and streamlining its policies to be more employee-friendly, especially for women.
Indian banking — both public sector and private — have been criticised in recent years over non-performing assets, loans made to companies that don’t pay back, and the commensurate losses that befall shareholders and the economy at large.
The thing is, she says, “it’s not just about the corporations evolving; it’s also about the whole ecosystem evolving. If auditors are not on board, if chartered accountants and valuers are not doing the right things, if legal is not up to date, you can’t really see a change on the corporate side.”
I press on. Do you see changes now? “Yes, I do. There are far more corporate lawyers today than there ever were, for example,” she says.
She goes on to say that corporations are getting savvier with their boards. “So nowadays, when they are looking for board members, they’re trying to pick out somebody from HR, somebody from risk, somebody from IT. And obviously, they’re trying to do that because they want guidance on these matters.”
To that extent, evolution is happening. “But where there’s an issue, I think, is that the traditional companies need to evolve faster. Because they are a far more mature model, they should be able to absorb change faster and create systems that will give far more transparency.”
Our lunch is almost done. I suggest dessert, telling Bhattacharya that the almond honey nut-crunch ice-cream is superlative. So she asks for it — not for herself but for me.
In her corporate career thus far, how does she see the transforming of India? "Well, we started as the BPO to the world, and have slowly climbed the scale to now being ‘centres of excellence’.”
“Having said that, I still believe we can do much to increase the ease of doing business, but overall, there’s a good feeling about our economy.”
On that optimistic note, we call it a wrap.*
“ITHINKTHAT TRADITIONAL COMPANIES NEED TO EVOLVE FASTER”