Mrs. Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairman of the Board

Chairman of the Board of Directors

Mrs. Arundhati Bhattacharya has over 47 years of rich experience spanning India’s financial services and technology sectors, holding leadership roles across a wide range of functions and geographies.
She is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce – South Asia. In this role, Arundhati oversees the company’s growth strategy and plays an integral role in shaping Salesforce’s relationship with its ecosystem of customers, partners, and the broader community across South Asia.

Prior to this, Mrs. Bhattacharya made history as the first-ever woman Chair of the State Bank of India, a Fortune 500 company, where she left a lasting impact on the global financial landscape. She brings deep expertise across all aspects of banking — including credit, forex, treasury, retail operations, mergers and acquisitions, and capital markets. She is credited with upscaling the bank's technology initiatives, giving the 219 year-old institution — India’s largest bank with a 22% market share — a digital edge that was widely acknowledged as path-breaking by the industry.

Recently honored with the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian awards by the Government of India for her contributions to Trade and Industry, she brings a legacy of leadership, innovation, and impact.

Her work in the area of Human Resources, with a special focus on the status of women and “challenged” members of the workforce, has also been of particular significance. Under her leadership, the bank was adjudged one of India's top 3 best places to work by global job site Indeed, based on over 15 million reviews across the world.

Other notable initiatives during her chairmanship include the overhauling of the bank's risk structure and the implementation of various technology tools for enhanced governance. She also led the historic merger of the parent bank with its six associate banks, creating an entity three times the size of its nearest competitor.

Her global recognition includes being ranked 25th in Forbes' list of the "Most Powerful Women in the World" and 5th in the "Most Powerful Women in Finance" in 2016. She has also been featured in the Fortune List of the top 50 most powerful women in business globally, and ranked among the top 5 in the Asia-Pacific region. Foreign Policy magazine named her among the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2014 — one of only two Indians on the list — and she was ranked 26th in the fourth edition of Fortune’s World 50 Greatest Leaders, becoming the only Indian corporate leader to be featured.