Mahua Moitra
Mahua Moitra (born 12 October 1974) is an Indian politician and a Member of parliament in the 17th Lok Sabha from Krishnanagar, West Bengal. She contested and won the seat in the 2019 Indian general election as an All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) party candidate.
Moitra served as a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly representing Karimpur from 2016 to 2019, and has served as the general secretary and national spokesperson of the AITC for the past few years. She was an investment banker before entering politics.
Moitra was born to Dwipendra Lal Moitra and Manjoo Moitra on 12 October 1974 in Labac in the Cachar district of Assam. Moitra went to school in Kolkata. She graduated in economics and mathematics in 1998 from Mount Holyoke College South Hadley in Massachusetts, United States.
On 13 November 2023, Moitra was appointed as AITC District President of Krishnanagar (Nadia North). She was an investment banker at JPMorgan Chase before entering politics.
Career
Moitra worked as an investment banker for JPMorgan Chase in New York City and London. She quit her position as vice-president at JPMorgan Chase in London in 2009 to enter Indian politics. Subsequently, she joined the Indian Youth Congress, the youth wing of the Indian National Congress party where she was one of the trusted hands of Rahul Gandhi in the project "Aam Admi Ka Sipahi". In 2010, she moved to the All India Trinamool Congress party. She was elected from the Karimpur constituency in Nadia district, West Bengal in the Legislative Assembly elections held in 2016. She has been elected as a member of parliament to the 17th Lok Sabha from Krishnanagar, West Bengal. Moitra has said that her ex-husband was Danish, and that she had lived in Scandinavia.
Arundhati Bhattacharya
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.
In 2018, her interview titled "Arundhati Bhattacharya: The Making of SBI’s First Woman Chairperson" was published on Harvard Business Review Ascend Archived 12 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine.
Bhattacharya was born in a Bengali family in the city of Kolkata. She spent her childhood in Bokaro Steel City. Her father, Prodyut Kumar Mukherjee worked at Bokaro Steel Plant. Her mother, Kalyani Mukherjee was a homeopathy consultant in Bokaro. She completed her schooling from St. Xavier's School, Bokaro.
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.
Career
Bhattacharya joined SBI in September 1977. She is the first woman to lead an India-based Fortune India 500 company. Initially, 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 including working in foreign exchange, treasury, retail operations, human resources and investment banking. This included positions like the chief executive of the bank's merchant banking arm- State Bank of India Capital Markets; chief general manager in charge of new projects. She has also served at the bank's New York office. She has been involved with the launch of several new businesses such as SBI General Insurance, SBI Custodial Services, SBI Pension Funds Pvt. Ltd. and the SBI Macquarie Infrastructure Fund. She succeeded Pratip Chaudhuri, as Chairman, who retired 30 Sep. 2013 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.
In 2016, she was named the 25th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes, which was her first time being ranked on the list. In the same year, she was ranked among the FP Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine She was named the 4th most powerful woman in Asia Pacific by Fortune. In 2017, India Today magazine ranked her at 19th in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list.
She was due for retirement in October 2016, but was granted an extension till October 2017, allegedly for the controversial merger of the SBI's five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank, in the wake of gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) mounting to 73 percent; the present government justifying the move through Banks Board Bureau, who consolidated her extension.
In 2018 she was named Business Leader of the Year at The Asian Awards. Arundhati Bhattacharya has joined as additional director, 'independent director' of Reliance Industries for five years commencing 17 October 2018.
In 2020 she was hired as the chairperson and chief executive for the India division of Salesforce, the global giant in CRM. She is also currently chairperson of SWIFT India, part of a global payments network.