Arundhati Bhattacharya is a banker who was the first woman to become Chairperson of the State Bank of India (SBI). She was born on March 18, 1956, in Kolkata, West Bengal to Prodyut Kumar Mukherjee, an engineer at Bokaro Steel Plant and Kalyani Mukherjee, a homoeopathy consultant.
She attended St Xavier’s School in Bokaro and studied English literature at Lady Brabourne College in Kolkata. Bhattacharya graduated from Jadavpur University in Kolkata.
While studying at University, Bhattacharya passed the entrance exam for the post of probationary officer (PO) at SBI and began her long and illustrious journey in the banking industry. In her decades-long career with the SBI, Bhattacharya brought in several revolutionary changes that benefitted the Bank. She also introduced several pro-women policies for SBI employees. Under Bhattacharya’s leadership, SBI evolved from a state-run lender into a customer-friendly bank. She retired as the chairperson of SBI in 2017.
She was listed among the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine. In 2018, Bhattacharya received the ‘Business Leader of the Year’ title at the Asian Awards and the Harvard Business Review Ascend published her interview titled ‘Arundhati Bhattacharya: The Making of SBI’s First Woman Chairperson’.
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