Former SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya to lead Salesforce India as CEO

San Francisco headquartered cloud-based customer relationship management solutions provider Salesforce has signed on former State Bank of India (SBI) chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya as its India head in a bid to expand across the subcontinent, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Bhattacharya will take charge as the new India chairperson and CEO on April 20th and report to Ulrik Nehammer, general manager at the company’s APAC business unit.

“India is an important growth market for Salesforce and a world-class innovation and talent hub and Arundhati’s leadership will guide our next phase of growth, customer success and investment in the region,” Gavin Patterson, president and CEO at Salesforce International said.

In 2016, Salesforce established a new centre of excellence in Hyderabad. Currently, it expects to hire 3,000 jobs across the region over the next three years, the statement added. The company has been present in India since 2005.

Some of Salesforce’s current clientele in India include tyre maker CEAT, online bus ticketing platform redBus, and financial services firm Franklin Templeton.

In September last year, it signed a contract with Mahindra & Mahindra to deploy its cloud services along with its artificial intelligence (AI) platform Einstein to build an all-inclusive customer engagement channel for the Mumbai-based automotive major.

“Salesforce is a company with an impressive track record in supporting the digital transformation of its customers with world class technology and there is an incredible opportunity for future growth in India,” Bhattacharya said.

Read: Salesforce to create over $67 bn in new business revenues in India by 2024

Bhattacharya, 64, stepped down as SBI’s first female chairperson in 2017, after having worked with the government-backed public sector bank for over 40 years. Bhattacharya is a board member across several Indian corporate conglomerates, some of which include Piramal Group, Wipro, Reliance Industries, amongst others, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Also read: Social, mobile, connected cloud solutions in focus for BFSI push at Salesforce

In her most recent role, she was chairperson at SWIFT India Domestic Services, the local unit of cross border payments platform SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication).