SBI chairman Pratip Chaudhuri loves to be the people’s person
Pratip Chaudhuri’s appearance is deceptive. The soft-spoken chairman of the nation’s biggest bank, the State Bank of India , in the very first week of taking office has proved that perceptions and reality can be so different. The one who was branded media-shy exhausted the media in his first interaction, answering questions till reporters ran out of them.
Likewise, he may be on course to prove that it may not be difficult to step into the shoes of OP Bhatt as many analysts believe now. But the style of functioning, both internal and external, will change significantly. Mr Chaudhuri is a man manager and promotes people with a vision to expand businesses, unlike Mr Bhatt who relied on his vision on how to run the bank and had his iron hand on every department.
Nationwide, there may be more smiles on SBI’s premises than before, thanks to Chaudhuri’s inclusive approach to HR management . Many in SBI know that they would be rewarded for performance and have the freedom to do whatever they wish to do, if it is helping the bank.
Many at SBI say that Mr Chaudhuri gained popularity due to his innovative ways of working around the system to reward excellence. His stint as chief general manager in Chennai is the most talked about. The story goes that he distributed gold coins to those employees who met business targets even if it meant going beyond the laidout structure of rewarding staff at the bank.
Apart from being a generous boss, Mr Chaudhuri turned around the gold loan business in a city which was dominated by local trading community of chettiyars and marwari lenders. Many say even as he appears unassuming, one would realise the aggression in him only while cutting a business deal.
Being the peoples’ person that he is, Mr Chaudhuri was entrusted with the job of State Bank of Saurashtra merger with the parent bank. Being a subsidiary of SBI, the only critical task of this exercise was the integration of 5,000-6,000 people with the bank, which Mr Chaudhuri seamlessly managed. Managing a few thousand people in a region may be different from running an institution with more than two lakh staff from different regions.
What he will have on hand is a balance sheet of 14,51,219.8 crore, 14,000 branches, five associate banks, 150 overseas offices, and numerous finance subsidiaries. Add to this, a plethora of public relations exercise he has to indulge in like addressing seminars and conferences, and lobbying on behalf of the industry and the bank itself with regulators and the government. And he has just two-and-a-half years to fulfil his dreams.
Having spent a good time of his career in New Delhi, he knows his way around the corridors of power, the most important ingredient of success at a state-run bank, than the knowledge of banking itself. Mr Chaudhuri started his career at SBI as a probationary officer in 1974 after completing his MBA. He headed international operations till recently. His biggest challenge would be to make peace with the RBI. Sharp differences had emerged between the former SBI chief and the RBI on teaser loans.
SBI has refrained from making provisions on the ground that these loans are given after proper due diligence, something that may have not gone down well with the RBI. “We will have a dialogue with the RBI. We will see if there has to be a compromise, or it can co exist,” Mr Chaudhuri has said. he has a liking for old Hindi songs like many of his generation that grew up listening to the melodies of Kishore Kumar and Mukesh.
When colleagues asked him what tilted the scales in his favour for the top job over colleague Hemant Contractor, who began service the same day more than three and a half decades ago, he sang, ” Yeh kya hua, keise hua, kab hua kyon hua, jab hua tab hua, o choda yeh na pucho.”
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