If you have six corporate centres, six treasuries, six of everything, and then if you bring it down to one of everything, obviously there are some savings.
— Arundhati Bhattacharya
In India, the investment banking industry is a little different. Overseas, the structures are very complicated, but not in India.
If you are really challenged, and if you are willing to take the plunge, very often some of the path opens up in front of you.
One thing I would tell women is that they must take up the challenge. Very often, we anticipate a lot of problems, and therefore, we don't take the lead. And I think that we are shortchanging ourselves if we don't do that.
If you are approachable, if you keep your line of communication open, then very often, you get to hear what you need to hear.
Women being women, they are very sincere, committed, and honest in what they do. If they feel they are shortchanging some segment of their responsibility, they have a tendency of holding themselves back. What I would like to tell them is that it is not necessarily true that you will short-change one or the other.
My friends have helped my daughter in certain areas more than I have. What these have taught me is that you need to be good to people. There will always be times when you need their help.
Often, people wonder if she can give the time required at work, given also her responsibilities at home. So a woman has to prove her worth over and over again each time she's given a new responsibility, especially when she is at junior to mid-level positions.
India has a very young population which is comfortable doing business on a screen than do it one on one with a banking executive. They want quick fulfilment of desires, and may not have the time to go to a bank to get things done. Many of them are comfortable working from home.
PSU banks are sole lenders to capital-intensive firms.
I have met a lot of women who are good at math.
Even for the people in the bank into which the other banks are merging, they also have a lot of apprehension. There is always an apprehension that opportunities will go down. There are apprehensions of displacement. Many of these apprehensions are unfounded.
Cash is not cheap. The physical infrastructure is not easy to maintain and cheap.
What needs to be done is that the digital initiatives that we had started, that those get the same kind of focus, and that we now disincentivize the use of cash. If you're going to slide back into the ways that we had before this demonetization impact, then you really won't get the benefits.
Some amount of support from government and regulator is required when you are looking at resolving systemic issues.
If you start from the farm sector, we need much better investments and capital creation on land. We need logistics support; we need cold chain and processing capability. We need proper pricing at various stages to ensure that the producers are not left out in the value-chain.
ATM is still a cash channel; we want to migrate it to the digital channel.
SBI Caps has a distinct advantage because most of our people are market recruits. We have a public sector heritage. Our challenge is to bring the best of both - public sector heritage and private sector talent - and provide a unique offering.
Disinvestments will continue to happen. If the issue is priced correctly, there's no reason why it should not sell.
I do believe in teamwork, and I think it's very important, especially for a woman, because if you don't have a good team, then you cannot step out if you need to.
At the end of the day, none of us are the Oracle of Delphi, so we don't get everything right. It's always good to be able to listen and to take on what seems to be the right thing to do.
Some people look at my photos and think maybe I'm feeling frazzled, but I really want to tell them I'm just having a bad hair day!
Had it not been for the groundswell of support by the people of India, we would not have seen such a huge exercise of demonetisation bounce off without a single riot or a single law and order issue.
After some time, my reputation preceded me each time I was given a new posting.
Once you have set the goal, give your staff the space to get there. If you micromanage, you will be able to do very little.
Things have their own pace, and if we work with that pace and anticipate the issues correctly, we can have good results.
If a woman is financially independent, she can definitely make a bigger contribution in making big decisions and contribute much more. If a woman is financially independent, she can pursue her interests, too.
It is only after you are able to stand on your own feet, or have the confidence that you can stand on your own feet, should you look at doing things such as marriage or setting up a family.
In any merger, the biggest challenge is always integration of human resources because the people who are coming in have a lot of apprehension.
If you want to deemphasise cash, then people should not only have an incentive for going digital but also a disincentive for doing cash.
Those who claim that they need cash because they are unable to pay labourers are those who are not paying minimum wages.
You can't merge six banks and think that nothing will happen.
A maturing process, and growth, is always painful. You ask any teenager, they will tell you, and it's just like that for the country. We need to grow; we need to evolve.
One of my main agenda right from the beginning has been cost rationalization, and we have done a lot of cost rationalization.
Competition is always there.
In India, women are still the primary caregivers. Whether it be for children, whether it be for old people or sick people, you are the primary caregiver. No matter what position you are in.
When there are good postings available, the people who choose who is to come to that particular position, they will always have, at the back of their minds, a fear that, 'If I take a woman, she might prioritize her family over the job and, therefore, not be available at times when her presence is required.'
If you snap off people's heads and get on to a kind of a pedestal, it's more difficult for people to approach you. It's much easier if you are down there with them. They will talk to you.
Most of the time, women believe that what lies ahead is a precipice. Whereas, if you continue to drive and stay on the path, the road will open up in front of you, and you will reach your destination. You don't need to turn around and abandon the journey.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned the narrative around on demonetisation very quickly by promoting the move as one way of ending systemic corruption in the country.
One of the big lessons I have learnt from my life is that things are never as difficult as they seem. When you actively plunge into it, you realize you can easily do it.
I believe in discussing very thoroughly what should be the goal. When discussing it, I allow others to give their views.
If you look at the international markets, for projects that are capital-intensive, the minute the construction phase is completed and production is supposed to start, normally all these loans get refinanced.
Children should be taught in school that you should have all kinds of asset classes in your portfolio. They should be taught what those asset classes are, and their advantages and disadvantages.
When interest rates are coming down, you cannot have high margins.
Our huge infrastructure that we need for keeping cash is very expensive.
As demand goes down, you will see prices come down.
Digital is the only way to get rid of corruption and unaccounted cash.
If you are satisfied, you will never see any more progress. One remains dissatisfied, but that doesn't mean that things are not happening.
You cannot take bank interest rates very sharply down: you will lose your deposit franchise.
