April 12, 2026

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HITTING THE REFRESH BUTTON

IT IS A LITTLE past 6 pm and Jinal Mehta slowly settles into his chair. The past month has been frenetic for the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Torrent PowerFirst off, there was the buyout of Nabha Power in Punjab from L&T, followed by the unveiling of a new brand identity for the group, which also has a presence in gas, pharmaceuticals, electricals, and diagnostics. The brand identity indicates a new B2C (business-to-consumer) thrust. "That is what we are doing at the group level too with both Torrent Power and Torrent Gas aggressively targeting the B2C segment. Even on renewables, we are tying up PPAs (power purchase agreements) with commercial and industrial customers," he saysThe branding refresh was the first such exercise by the group in four decades. "Perhaps, there was no need to refresh the brand (all these years) since it still looked contemporary. But we felt it was necessary now as the group starts to look at more B2C businesses," says Mehta.

THE CEO WHO DREAMS BIG

RUNDHATI BHATTACHARYA WATCHES A lot of Netflix. "It could be any web series," she says. Her favourite right now is Sullivan's Crossing, a heartwarming series focused on neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan, who flees a scandal in Boston to her rural Nova Scotia hometown. A welcome break in view of the challenging task Bhattacharya has set for herself--to grow Salesforce into a force to reckon with in the digital world. Before joining Salesforce as Chairperson for South Asia, she was the Chairperson of State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest bankFrom her first day of professional employment in 1977 with SBI, this post-graduate in English literature, who spent her formative years in Bhilai and then Bokaro, has never treaded the safe path. After four decades with SBI, she is equally at home in the world of AI-driven customer relationship management. A BUNCH OF SMALL, BIG THINGS In the lives of most professionals, a few instances make all the difference. For Bhattacharya, it was an assignment in Kharagpur, when she led a team for the first time. Her boss was in Burdwan, a good 130 km away, and in a world without mobile phones, it was quite an experience. Decisions had to be taken quickly, by the person on the ground"I faced a strongly unionised branch, and it taught me a lot about negotiation. I learnt how to do a lot with limited resources," she says, sitting in her office in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex. Later, she moved to the US for a stint in New York and took the "extremely tough" decision to send her daughter back home for a year. At that point, her aunt was a great source of support. "I still don't know if I took the right decision." Then, there was a stint as chief general manager for new businesses based out of Mumbai. "Opening a new business in a public sector bank is not easy but it turned out to be the most productive period of my life," she says. For one, Bhattacharya had to deal with a new set of regulators. "Till then, it was only the Reserve Bank of India. Now, for a private equity fund, I had to talk to Sebi and RBI, and for general insurance, IRDAI; to operationalise the fund management company, I also interacted with PFRDA." That set her up for other new assignments, one of them being SBI Capital Markets. "The SBI name opened a