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Salesforce Hires Former SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya As India CEO

Arundhati Bhattacharya will be based in Mumbai and will join Salesforce India on April 20 to lead its growth and expansion here.

Arundhati Bhattacharya, former chairman of the State Bank of India. (Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg)
Arundhati Bhattacharya, former chairman of the State Bank of India. (Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg)

U.S.-based Salesforce.com Inc. has appointed Arundhati Bhattacharya, the former chairman of State Bank of India, as the chairperson and chief executive officer of its India operations, according to sources aware of the development.

Bhattacharya, 64, will be based in Mumbai and will join Salesforce India on April 20 and will lead its growth and expansion across the market, the sources told Press Trust of India. She will report to Ulrik Nehammer, the general manager for Asia-Pacific region.

While Salesforce could not be reached for a confirmation on the appointment, Bhattacharya refused to comment saying the matter is private.

Bhattacharya was the first woman to lead India’s largest public sector bank in over two centuries of its existence. She retired as a banker in 2017 and then moved on to the international payment platform Swift India as its chairperson, a position she still holds.

At SBI, she effected the merger of five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with the lender—making it at that time one of the 50 largest banks in the world. SBI also underwent a technological transformation with her at the helm. It was during her tenure that State Bank of India launched its digital banking platform, Yono.

Salesforce provides an array of cloud storage and digital services to clients in India, which it sees as a one of its fastest growing markets.

Salesforce will create over five lakh jobs and generate $67 billion in new business revenue in India through 2024, according International Data Corporation’s 2019 report. India’s cloud-computing market is expected to grow at 21 percent to more than $1.4 billion in 2020, according to a recent Gartner report.