MPW 2023: How Salesforce India’s Arundhati Bhattacharya deals with moments of self-doubt

JUST DO IT. That, in a nutshell, explains what Arundhati Bhattacharya did every time she encountered self-doubt during her long and storied career. Because, one mantra she has followed throughout is to never give up. “Giving up is the easiest thing to do... When faced with a situation that is asking you to give up, I have realised the only way to get past these moments of self-doubt is to go ahead with the notion of ‘I can do it’ and ‘I will do it’,” says Bhattacharya, who retired as the first female chairman of SBI.

It was the same ‘will do’ attitude that led her to accept US cloudbased software firm Salesforce’s offer to be Chairperson and CEO of its India operations. And she took the role at 64, something not many would do. And it’s thanks to such bold moves that she has entered the Hall of Fame of BT’s Most Powerful Women in Business—an exclusive club reserved for seven-time winners of the MPW awards.

“I had always been very interested in technology... there was not a single technology vendor at SBI that I did not interact with during my tenure. I knew going forward, the whole world is going to need digital and every business will need a very strong technology backbone in order to survive,” she explains.

But moving from banking to the tech sector involved a lot of unlearning and relearning. She was the first CEO of Salesforce in India, and had to chart her own path. The role involved not just sales and distribution functions but also large support and engineering functions, products, marketing, and R&D, which Salesforce did not have in any other country but in the US.

“When you take on something that is so different from what you’ve done for 40 years, it entails a lot of change. It means learning a lot of things and the chances of success are always 50-50.” But her hard work paid off, and the company has grown from 2,500 employees in India when she joined in 2020 to 10,000 employees now. Plus, the second quarter of 2024 saw India emerging as the fastest-growing market in the APAC region for Salesforce. The company follows a February-January fiscal year.

Bhattacharya’s journey is a testament to her courage and determination, and ‘just doing it’.

@nidhisingal