Chanda Kochhar

Some Lesser Known Facts About Chanda Kochhar

• Chanda Kochhar is the former CEO and managing director of ICICI Bank.

• While growing up in Jaipur, she aspired to become an IAS officer. However, the commercial milieu in Mumbai turned her into a banker.

• During her school days, she was a prolific basketball and badminton player.

• She joined ICICI Bank when she was 22 years old.

• In 1984, she began her career as a management trainee with the erstwhile ICICI Limited. While working as a management trainee, she was held in charge of appraisals and management of projects in several industries including petrochemicals, textile, paper, and cement.

• During the 1990s, Chanda Kochhar played an instrumental role in establishing ICICI Bank.

• In 1993, she became a member of the core team made for setting up the bank. She formulated strategies for retail and corporate departments, determined branch roll-out strategies, and took care of the technology architecture of the bank.

• In 1994, she was chosen for the position of assistant general manager (AGM) of the ICICI Bank.

• In 1996, she became the deputy general manager (DGM) of the ICICI bank and managed the Infrastructure Industry Group of the ICICI Bank; the group was made to work in the fields of power, telecom and transportation.

• In 1998, she was made the general manager of the bank and was assigned the task to handle the top 200 clients of the bank. Later, she was assigned to manage ICICI Bank’s strategy and e-commerce divisions.

• At the ICICI Bank, she was interviewed by K. V. Kamath.

  

• In April 2001, she was appointed as executive director of the bank and handled the retail business of the bank. Under her leadership as the executive director of the bank, ICICI Bank won Best Retail Bank in India Award by The Asian Banker in 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2005. In 2002, the bank won Excellence in Retail Banking Award from The Asian Banker. In the same year, she was elevated to the Board of Directors of ICICI Bank.

• In April 2006, she was appointed as the deputy managing director of the bank and headed the bank’s corporate and international banking businesses.

• She went on to head the corporate banking business and infrastructure finance at the Bank.

• Focussing on technology, re-engineering, scaling up of distribution, and innovation, Chanda Kochhar led the Bank to a leadership position in this business.

  

• In October 2007, she became the chief financial officer (CFO) and joint managing director of the bank. Her duties under this designation included managing international and corporate businesses. She left the position in October 2009.

• In 2009, she was elevated to the positions of managing director & CEO of ICICI Bank. She took care of the banking business internationally and was involved in managing customer relationships in India and internationally, giving them the access to diverse facilities of the bank.

• In 2011, she was chosen to be one of the chairpersons for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. Later, she was selected as a member of the US-India CEO Forum and India-Russia Business Leaders Forum.

• From 2015 to 2016, she was appointed as the president of the International Monetary Conference. She was appointed as the deputy chairman of the Indian Banks Association.

• She was appointed as the chairperson of the board of governors at IIIT Vadodara, Gujarat. National Institute of Securities Markets and the Institute of International Finance appointed her as one of the board members. Later, she became a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade & Industry, the Board of Trade and the High-Level Committee on Financing Infrastructure in India.

• In an interview, she talked about her college days and shared that she was interested in dramatics and also took part in some of the programs of All India Radio.

• In 2009, she was listed in ‘World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list’ by Forbes as the second Indian; Sonia Gandhi, president of the Indian National Congress, was the first Indian on the list. She was also featured on the cover of Forbes magazine.

  

• On the 2010 ‘World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list’ by Forbes, she achieved the 92nd position; however, in 2011, she jumped up to 43rd position. She achieved the 43rd position in 2014, the 35th position in 2015, and the  32nd position in 2017.

• She also chairs the boards of principal subsidiaries of most of the Indian banks including India’s leading private sector life and general insurance companies.

• In addition to the ICICI group, Chanda Kochhar has been a member of the US-India CEO Forum, the India-Japan Business Leaders Forum and the Board of trade.

• In 2015-16, she worked as the President of the International Monetary Conference, an organization that annually brings together the chief executives of approximately 70 of the world’s largest financial institutions from 30 countries.

• She has been a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade & Industry.

• In 2017, she became the first Indian woman to receive the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Award for Global Citizenship, joining the ranks of Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice.

  

• Chanda Kochhar’s family has earned a prominent reputation among India’s celebrated families. Her family’s status can be gauged by the star-studded guest list of the wedding of her daughter Aarti in December 2014. The guest list included- Mukesh Ambani, Nita Ambani, Gautam Adani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, P Chidambaram, Uddhav Thackeray, Nitin Gadkari, Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, and many more.

  

• During an interview, she said that she doesn’t exercise at all and thanked God for her metabolism which keeps her lean.

• Chanda Kochhar accepts being a religious person but condemns the orthodox rituals.

• In an interview, when she was asked about how she manages to maintain a friendly relationship with her customers and employees of the bank, despite being the CEO of the bank, she replied,
  

  I make regular visits to all our branches. I go almost unannounced, and at a branch, I make an effort to talk to the people there. And for the past two years, I have been holding regularly scheduled employee discussion meetings. These are not performance reviews or meetings with a particular business segment—with a boss and his subordinate and the next subordinate and the next. These are just meetings with different sets of about 20 employees picked on a random basis at various levels of the organization. We do them once a month. I promise people who participate that whatever they say is just for me to absorb and will not go out of the room. Sometimes we talk about the work environment in the branches. Sometimes we talk about what customers are feeling. Sometimes we talk about gender issues. Sometimes we talk about our transfer policies. And over time, people have learned that they can speak to me and they do; no one outside the room knows who spoke.”