Chanda Kochhar is the Managing Director and CEO of ICICI Bank, India's second largest bank. She has had a successful career at ICICI Bank spanning over 30 years, taking on several leadership roles. As MD & CEO, she has transformed ICICI Bank's strategy and culture, focusing on disciplined growth, profitability, and risk management over exuberant expansion. Her leadership and focus on execution have led to improved financial performance and a more customer-centric and stable institution. She continues to be actively involved through visits to bank branches and meetings with employees to understand ground realities and ensure ICICI Bank remains responsive to stakeholders' needs.

1. PROFILE
Kochhar was born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan and raised in Jaipur, Rajasthan. She is an
alumnus of St. Angela Sophia School, Jaipur. She then moved to Mumbai, where
she joined Jai Hind College for a Bachelor of Arts degree. After graduating in 1982
she then pursued Cost Accountancy ICWAI, Later, she acquired the Masters Degree
in Management Studies from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management
Studies, Mumbai. She received the Wockhardt Gold Medal for Excellence in
Management Studies as well as the J. N. Bose Gold Medal in Cost Accountancy for
highest marks in the same year.
Kochhar resides in Mumbai, and is married to Deepak Kochhar, a wind energy
entrepreneur and her business school mate. She has two children, a son and a
daughter.

2. CAREER
Ms. Chanda Kochhar is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ICICI
Bank Limited, India's second-largest bank and the largest in the private sector. She
is widely recognised for her role in shaping the retail banking sector in India and for
her leadership of the ICICI Group, as well as her contributions to various forums in
India and globally.
Ms. Kochhar began her career, with erstwhile ICICI Limited in 1984 and was
elevated to the Board of Directors of ICICI Bank in 2001. She was instrumental in
establishing ICICI Bank during the 1990s, and subsequently headed the
infrastructure finance and corporate banking business in ICICI Limited. In 2000, she
took on the challenge of building the nascent retail business, with strong focus on
technology, innovation, process reengineering and expansion of distribution and
scale. The Bank achieved a leadership position in this business. During 2006-2007,
she successfully led the Bank's corporate and international banking businesses
during a period of heightened activity and global expansion by Indian companies.
From 2007 to 2009, she was the Joint Managing Director & Chief Financial Officer
during a critical period of rapid change in the global financial landscape. She was
elevated as Managing Director & CEO of ICICI Bank in 2009 and is responsible for
the Bank's diverse operations in India and overseas. She also chairs the boards of
the Bank's principal subsidiaries, which include India's leading private sector life and
general insurance companies.
In addition to her responsibilities at the ICICI Group, Ms. Kochhar is a member of the
Prime Minister's Council on Trade & Industry, the Board of Trade, High-Level
Committee on Financing Infrastructure, US-India CEO Forum and UK-India CEO
Forum. She is a member of the boards of the Indian Council for Research on
International Economic Relations, National Institute of Securities Markets, Institute of
International Finance and International Monetary Conference. She was co-chair of
the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in 2011.

3. CHANGED THE FORTUNES
As she begins her second term as MD & CEO, Chanda Kochhar wants
the bank to grow more than the industry not by taking on more risk
but by building a strong base of customers and shunning the pell-mell
marketing of credit card and personal loans to newcomers,
says Shyamal Majumdar.
As the days at work got longer after she became the managing director & CEO of
ICICI Bank exactly five years ago, Chanda Kochhar had to make substantial
changes in her once must-do routine.
But she has refused to give up two things: one, visiting the bank’s branches
almost unannounced; and two, her monthly informal meetings with about 20
employees picked on a random basis.
These two things help her stay glued to the ground, Kochhar says. For example, at
one of her visits to a bank branch, Kochhar learnt why the “May I help you” desk
at a branch should be manned by one of the most experienced employees instead
of the junior-most staff as that is the customer’s first contact with the bank. Her
monthly meetings with employees have nothing to do with performance reviews.
These are free-flowing conversations on work environment in the branches, how
customers are feeling, gender issues, transfer policies, etc.
“Over time, people have learnt that they can speak to me; no one outside the
room knows who spoke,” Kochhar says. She adds data can only tell you about
things you are doing already but it can’t tell you about things you’re not doing.
Attention to details such as these and relentless focus on execution are what have
helped Kochhar, 52, achieve a radical reversal in the bank’s strategy by toning
down the earlier exuberance (30-40 per cent annual growth in credit portfolio
with consumer loans making up two-thirds of its total book before she took over)
and muscular image (bank employees forgot that they had to be humble and
listen to customers). In the first phase of her stewardship, ICICI Bank became a
cautious entity which didn’t sit on its ego. So risk was out and profitability was in,
even if it meant reduction in the balance sheet size.

4. Kochhar says as a conscious effort, the bank has evolved and has brought about
change with continuity: “What we have still continued is some of the strengths of
dynamism, speed and so on but what we have changed or added is a lot more
sensitivity to our stakeholders. And that includes dealing with employees in a
more sensitive and humane way.” Her strategy is to expand not by taking on more
risk, but by building a base of loyal customers and shunning the pell-mell
marketing of credit card and personal loans to newcomers that so endangered the
bank just five years ago. So going forward, the three fulcrums of her strategy will
be growth, profitability and risk management.
In other words, it will be disciplined expansion that has added a fifth “C” (credit
growth) to the bank’s well-known 4C strategy (CASA or current and savings
account deposits which are inexpensive, credit quality, cost and capital
conservation).
The growth, she says, will be diversified across retail, housing, car loans, new
projects, working capital loans, and so on. Kochhar knows she is on a sound
footing when she talks about higher growth than the industry.
When she took over as MD & CEO five years ago, the bank recorded a net profit
of just Rs 744 crore (Rs 7.44 billion), and gross NPAs as a percentage of loans
were 4.32 per cent. That is a distant memory now.
Kochhar, who lost her father when she was just 13, has often attributed her
tenacity and willpower to her mother who graduated from a housewife to a
determined career woman after moving from Jaipur to Mumbai with her three
children.
ICICI Bank’s success shows determination is truly in the genes.
“Banks will have to learn to cater to Fortune500 companies and marginal
farmers,and both will require different models. Financial inclusion is not
just opening accounts for the under privileged, but also providing them
with an array of financial services.”
For decades now, women in our country have been struggling to balance their evolution as
mothers, homemakers, dedicated professionals and nation-builders. Chanda Kochhar represents an

5. industry which fortunately, is no more stymied by gender definitions. Perceived as top corporate
honcho, as MD & CEO of India’s largest Private sector bank, ICICI, few would guess that side-by-side;
she has also been the most hands-on mother. Her daughter Aarti Kochhar, a spontaneous, articulate
young lady of 23, who is an engineer by qualification, and just back from America where she works
with renowned consulting firm;