Board of Directors

Mrs Arundhati Bhattacharya has over 40 years of rich experience in India's financial sector working across varied roles and diverse national and international locations.

During her four-year tenure as the first-ever woman Chair of the State Bank of India, a fortune 500 company, Mrs Bhattacharya has stamped her imprint on the financial world not just in India but globally as well. Mrs Bhattacharya has expertise and deep understanding of all aspects of banking speanning the domains of credit, forex, treasury, retail operations, mergers and acquisitions besides the capital and bond markets. She is credited with upscaling the bank's technology initiatives in order to give this 212 year old largest bank of India (22% market share) a digital edge that has been acknowledged by industry as path breaking. Her work in the area of Human Resources with special focus on status of women and "challenged" members of the work force, has also been of special significance. Under her leadership of the bank was adjudged one of India's top 3 best places to work in India by leading Indian global job site 'Indeed' based on their 15 million reviews globally for most highly rated reviews on overall employee experience.

Other notable initiatives during her Chairmanship include the overhauling of the bank's risk structure and implementation of various technology tools for this purpose. She also engineered the merger of the mother bank with its six Associate banks creating an entity three times the size of its nearest competitor.

Forbes magazine had ranked her  25th in their list of "Most Powerful Womrn In The World" and 5th in "Most Powerful Women In Finance" category in 2016. She has also been featured in the Fortune List of Top 50 globally most powerful women in business and ranked among the top 5 in the Asia-Pacific Region. She was included in the top 100 Global Thinkers in 2014 by Foreign Policy Magazine and was one of the two Indians on the list. She has been ranked 26th in the fourth edition of Fortune's World 50 Greatest Leaders List, becoming the only Indian Corporate leader to be featured in the list.

Mr. Neeraj Gambhir is the Group Executive – Treasury, Markets & Wholesale Banking Products of Axis Bank since May, 2020. He has over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry with expertise in Fixed Income, Foreign Exchange, Capital Markets, Structured Finance, Derivatives, Risk Management and Investment Banking areas. Previously, he was the Managing Director and Head of Fixed Income for Nomura Holding Inc India, where he set up and grew their Fixed Income franchise in the country. Prior to that, he was the Managing Director of Lehman Brothers India and a Senior General Manager and Global Head of Structured Finance & Balance Sheet Management at ICICI Bank. Mr. Gambhir is a Board Member & former Chairman of Fixed Income and Money Market Dealers Association of India. He helped establish the Clearing Corporation of India and was a Nominee Director of its Board. He was also the Vice Chairman of the task force set up by Ministry of Finance - Government of India, for establishing a Public Debt Management Office in India. Additionally, he was involved in India - Japan discussions for financial co-operation. Mr. Gambhir holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science and is a Post Graduate in Business Management from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow where he was awarded PGP Chairman’s Medal.

Mr. Ram joined the Banking Industry as Direct Recruit Probationary Officer in the year 1990. In his 30 years of banking experience, he has been involved in branch operations in various parts of the country and IT operations in India, Kenya and Singapore. Prior to assuming his current charge of Digital Banking operations of the Bank, he was Chief Information Officer at Bank of India and headed Data Centre operations of domestic and Foreign branches and its sponsored RRBs.　

Mr. Ram is a graduate in Science from Calcutta University and has also done Leadership Development Program in 2019-2020 from IIM, Bangalore. He is a CAIIB and has completed Advanced Management Program in Banking from Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai. He is a Diploma holder in Cyber Law from Government Law College, Mumbai. Mr. Ram also holds a Diploma in Rail Transport Management (Bronze Medalist) acquired during his tenure with Indian Railways.　

Amongst other things, he takes　keen interest in social service programmes and is also a proud recipient of　the President’s Scout Award.

Rajesh Naik is currently the Executive Vice President & Head of Central Processing Unit of Trade Finance at HDFC Bank and has been working with HDFC Bank for over 13 years. Prior to his new role, he was heading the Foreign Branch Operations. 

Before joining HDFC Bank Mr. Naik has worked with Yes Bank, ABN Amro Bank , IDBI Bank and The Kapol Co-op Bank. All throughout his banking career he has been involved in the Treasury operations and possesses a rich experience in this domain. He has played a key role in the launch of various products for the bank's Treasury operations. 

Mr. Naik is a graduate and is CA (Inter) and cleared CA (Final group I)

Mr. Kiran Kumar Tarania is currently the General Manager – Treasury Division at Punjab National Bank. He is an accomplished finance professional with over 33 years of demonstrated history of work experience in banking industry. He has been with the bank since 1989 and has rich experience in treasury management, risk management, corporate credit & general banking. 

Mr. Tarania holds a B.Com (Hons) and a Masters of Management Studies degree and is a Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers.

As Managing Director, Middle East Africa India Subcontinent (MEAISC), Mr. Sid-Ahmed Bestani leads major SWIFT initiatives in the region, working on synergies, collaboration, and business development between SWIFT’s offices in Africa, the Middle East and India.

From 2007-15, he was Head of Middle East & North Africa and led the creation of SWIFT’s consultancy hub in Dubai in 2012. 

He began his career as an IT consultant then worked for an insurance company in Paris as a trader. From there, Mr. Bestani joined SWIFT for five years, where he held several positions, before moving to CACEIS in Paris for five years where he gained extensive project management and sales experience in the securities business. 

Mr. Bestani re-joined SWIFT in 2007. He holds a Bachelor in Mathematics and a Master in Mechanical Engineering

Shriyanka is currently leading Swift's product organization called Market Infrastructure Communities and Standards Services which serves 253+ market infrastructures across payments, securities and FX. She also leads the team driving the co-ordinated efforts towards the adoption of ISO20022 by 80+ Domestic High Value Payments Systems and is leading the work towards achieving Interoperability across RTGS, Instant Payments and CBDC ecosystems fulfilling Swift’s commitment towards enabling markets meet the G20 targets of speed, transparency and cost.

Shriyanka is an industry expert on payments and serves on multiple global industry advisory boards including the CPMI PIE taskforce stream on Interlinking of Payment market infrastructures . In the past she has served as a member of the Standards Advisory Panel for Bank of England towards its RTGS Renewal , EBA/ABE in their development of Request to Pay, NACHA’s development of ERI and Healthcare Payments and NPCI’s development of NACH. Prior to SWIFT, Shriyanka led Oracle’s global product strategy for payments across corporate and retail banking and also served IBM in India and South Asia as Chief Technical Architect for Financial Services. She spent her early career at Intellect Design Arena (erstwhile Polaris Software Labs and Citibank Overseas Software Limited) consulting with multiple GTBs globally and building out the payments product vertical.

Shriyanka holds a degree in Electrical and Electronics engineering and in general management .

Rosemary was appointed Chief Business Development Officer in May 2021, with responsibility for business development and communications. Previously, Rosemary was SWIFT’s Chief Corporate Officer. Prior to that, she was Global Head of Human Resources, Managing Director for the UK, Ireland and Nordics, and held senior management positions within SWIFT in the US and Belgium. Earlier in her career, she held a variety of senior roles in corporate and public affairs in both London and Brussels.

Shirish joined Swift in 2022 as Global Head – Wholesale Payments & Trade Strategy, based at Singapore. Shirish has over 24 years of experience and the last 16 years in Payments across retail, corporate, and financial institutions. At Swift he is responsible for the definition of “Why” for Wholesale Payments & Trade, an area that is both, core today and for the future of global commerce across the ecosystem Swift serves.

Wholesale Payments & Trade is an integrated agenda that covers core payment products for B2x payments and corporate treasury; trade standards, digitisation, and trade platforms; payment market infrastructures, and marketplaces. Shirish represents Swift on the ICC Digital Standards Initiative Industry Advisory Board and is also on the Board of Directors of Swift India, a Swift joint venture with leading banks in India.

Before Swift, Shirish was Managing Director & Global Head of Payments for Standard Chartered Bank. His 19-year career at Standard Chartered spanned geographies of Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, and Asia. He held multiple leadership roles encompassing Product P&L management of retail and corporate payments, currency clearing, and FI Trade finance. Most recently he led the bank’s foray into Digital Currencies and alternate settlement networks.

Mr. Anupam Verma heads the International Business at IFSC GIFT City and international business with Financial Institutions for ICICI Bank. Anupam started his career as a Management graduate with ICICI Ltd in 1999 and has rich experience of over 21 years of experience across businesses (project finance, corporate & institutional banking, global FI, fund raising, private banking and retail) in India & international markets. He enjoyed diverse career roles and responsibilities, which progressed from credit assessment, client coverage and business development, to leading business with end-to-end responsibility for credit, coverage and compliance. Anupam possesses a sharp understanding of Global Fixed Income market through investor engagement across Asia, US, Europe and other financial markets.

In his recent role, Anupam Verma was the Chief Executive for ICICI Bank Singapore and Regional Head for South East Asia. In Singapore, he was associated with SINDA (Singapore Indian Development Association) on multiple initiatives. Recognized by SINDA for valuable contribution, through career guidance talks to secondary school students, as a part Skills Future initiative of SG govt. He was also associated with SINDA as a mentor under SINDA IBR mentoring program.

Born 1974, Mr. Verma is B.Tech from The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India  and completed his MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, India in 1999

Mr. Janardhana Rao P V is currently the Chief General Manager – Head Integrated Treasury Division at Canara Bank. Mr. Rao has a rich experience of over 35 years in the field of banking. He has worked in various capacities in the areas like Forex Transactions, information technology and treasury operations.

Under his leadership, the Bank’s Quality Circle teams won several awards and accolades at various forums.

Mr. Rao is a Bachelor of Science, holds a degree in General Law and a Masters in Computer Science. He is also a Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers.

Mr. Biranchi Narayan Rath is presently General Manager (International Banking-Domestic, Retail & Subsidiaries), International Banking Group, for State Bank of India. Mr. Rath is a career banker having 31 years of rich experience in the field of International Banking, Credit, Corporate Banking and Retail Banking in both domestic and foreign offices of the Bank. He started career as a Probationary Officer in 1992 .

Prior to this role, Mr. Rath was responsible for handling the International Credit Portfolio of the Bank of around USD 60 Bn. In his earlier assignments, he has also worked as Vice President (Corporate Banking) in SBI (Mauritius) Ltd., an overseas Banking Subsidiary of SBI.

Mr. Rath is a Post Graduate in Physics from Utkal University, Odisha and has completed Diploma in Management from IMT and a Diploma in International Banking and Finance, he is also a Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers.

He is presently serving as Director in the Board of SBI Mauritius Ltd and Bank of Bhutan. He is also the President Commissioner of PT. Bank SBI Indonesia, an overseas banking subsidiary of SBI.

Taran heads the Trade Product business for Standard Chartered Bank, India. In his role Taran is leading the Trade Product Development, Trade Product Commercialisation across various client segments and the Trade digitisation engagement in India. Since joining the Bank in 2007, Taran has taken up leadership roles across Relationship Management, Transaction Banking Sales and Product Development in SCB India. Taran also leads strategic engagements with Fintech’s and Industry players that potentially offer growth opportunities for Trade in India.

Taran has an overall experience of 21+ years having started his career in the IT sector and then worked across Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank. An Engineer by graduation and a Master’s in Business Administration in IT and Marketing. Taran is also a Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO).     

Mr. Saurabh Shukla is presently the Chief Technology Officer of the Bank of Baroda. Mr. Shukla is a career banker with 24 years of experience in the field of Information Technology with expertise in digital strategy and transformation, data analytics, cloud technologies, platform engineering, solution architecture, technology risk management and cyber security.

Prior to this role, Mr Shukla was responsible for managing strategic technology projects and digital transformation programmes. In his earlier assignments, he set up the Centre of Excellence in Analytics and Technology and the Cyber Security Operations Centre at the Bank of Baroda. He also played a pivotal role in integrating the technology ecosystem after the amalgamation of three nationalised banks.

Mr. Shukla holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science, a Master of Science, and an Executive MBA.