Arundhati Bhattacharya is a retired Indian banker and former Chairperson of the State Bank of India.She is the first woman to be the Chairperson of State Bank of India . In 2016, she was listed as the 25th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. She is the only Indian corporate leader listed on Fortune’s world’s greatest leaders list ranked at 26.
Bhattacharya was born in a Bengali family in the city of Kolkata. She spent her childhood in Bokaro Steel City. Her parents worked in Bokaro. She completed her schooling from St. Xavier’s School, Bokaro. She joined SBI in 1977 as a Probationary Officer at the age of 22 years. She has held several positions during her 36-year career with the bank.

She studied English literature at Calcutta’s Lady Brabourne College and then at Jadavpur University. Her husband, Pritimoy Bhattacharya, is an ex-professor of IIT Kharagpur. She introduced a two-year sabbatical leave policy for the bank’s female employees to use either for maternity or elder care. On Women’s day, she announced free vaccination against cervical cancer to all the bank’s female employees. Bhattacharya faced her most challenging test yet with the State Bank of India, the country’s biggest. Mounting bad loans, which stood at $11 billion in December, caused net profit to plunge more than 60% to $190 million in a recent quarter. “The days of promoters gaming the banking system are over,” she warned in February, before urging the arrest of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, whose defunct Kingfisher Airlines She was named the 4th most powerful woman in Asia Pacific by Fortune. She retired fro bank in 2018. Later she served nuber of organisations as chair person/ adviser.