Very cautiously, Chanda Kochhar steps back into limelight

Kochhar was recruited in 1984 as a management trainee and rose to become its MD and CEO in 2009.

In her Netflix documentary, ‘Martha’, the American billionaire and tastemaker Martha Stewart says, “I have two mottos: Learn something new every day, and that when you’re through with change, you’re through. Move on.” Their personal stories may be different but Stewart and Chanda Kochhar have shared a similar arc of heroic rise and a steep fall. Both have been nationally known figures who faced inglorious exits from their respective companies over allegations of fiduciary impropriety, followed by jail stints.

Chanda Kochhar (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

But since we now live in an age of Hollywood iconography which demands that redemption be the third arc, Chanda Kochhar, Indian banking’s one-time golden girl and now its cautionary tale, is attempting a comeback in public life. Like Stewart, who at 70-something, chose her comeback through a Comedy Central Roast, Kochhar, 63, has planned her return through that medium beloved of Gen Z — the podcast. She launched her show ‘Journey Unscripted’ earlier this month, with Harsh Mariwala, founder and chairman of Marico, as her first guest.

“I have always believed that people’s lives, their journeys are a huge source of learning—the way they handle challenges and their triumphs. To understand how people deal with situations—and not just what they went through-- is something that can be a huge source of learning, and I wanted to take these to a larger set of people,” she says when asked about the impetus behind the podcast.

Unlike Stewart, a media star who understands the let-it-all-hang-out brassiness required for comeback narratives, Kochhar alternates between tentativeness and reticence when it comes to talking about her almost cinematic life and career. To most questions in this interview her answer was a shake of the head and a plea to switch off the recorder. At one point she even said she would not like the name ICICI used anywhere in the copy.

Except, it’s the only place she has ever worked at.

She was recruited in 1984 as a management trainee and rose to become its MD and CEO in 2009. Over the next decade she turned it into one of India’s largest banks. In 2010 Kochhar was in the Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. The Padma Bhushan came the following year, and subsequently, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Global Corporate Citizenship. She was on the front row at all corporate events, and when asked about work-life balance on a television interview some years ago, she said, only half-joking, “My family says, I see ICI.”

In 2017, however, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began a preliminary inquiry into allegations of Kochhar misusing her position as the bank’s MD and CEO to issue a tranche of loans worth ₹3,250 crore to Videocon Group of Industries. In January 2019, the CBI filed its FIR claiming that Kochhar was part of the sanctioning committee which disbursed a ₹300 crore loan to Videocon promoter Venugopal Dhoot. Videocon eventually defaulted leading to a loss for the bank, said CBI. Kochhar, for her part, has contested this in court claiming the bank did not suffer any wrongful losses. CBI in its FIR further said that these loans were a part of a quid pro quo between Dhoot, Kochhar and her husband Deepak. The Videocon promoter allegedly invested ₹64 crore in Deepak Kochhar’s company NuPower Renewables Ltd a day after the ₹300 crore loan was cleared by the bank. Days after the CBI FIR and six months before her term as CEO ended, ICICI terminated Chanda Kochhar’s services.

Since then, except for court appearances, she has lain low and away from the public gaze. What has kept her going through these seven years, one wonders. In a publicly circulated letter to her daughter Aditi after she took over as ICICI CEO, Kochhar wrote: “If you don’t allow stress to overtake you, it can never become an issue in your life.” Has it really been that simple? “I view those events that have happened—and you need not call them stressors—but yes, an event or an issue that hits you personally, you just focus on how you can manage or solve it,” she says elliptically in a clear bell-like voice. “I have always believed in the conviction of my conscience and stood straight on the belief that when you do nothing wrong, the truth always prevails.”

Both she and her husband are out on bail at present, awaiting the resolution of their case. But after seven years in the shadows, she is also looking at a public rehabilitation, and the podcast is just one of the ways to do so. “I am open to everything, this can lead to bigger things, but let’s see…” she says when asked about the prospects of writing a book next, just as former McKinsey MD Rajat Gupta did to repair reputational damage after he was jailed for insider trading. “At the moment though I am enjoying the podcast. I do the research and choose the guests myself. We aim to do three podcasts a month and coming next up is a conversation with an actor,” she says, refusing to reveal the name. “See the promo and you’ll be able to guess.”

She is looking for stories of grit, resilience, leadership and people’s journeys that are full of challenges and triumphs, she says. Sounds like her life! What’s the one question she would ask on the podcast if she had Chanda Kochhar in the interviewee’s seat? “Oh! but I don’t do interviews, mine are conversations,” she says without answering the question but has the grace to smile at her own disingenuousness.

Perhaps a good question to ask might have been this: What happens to institutional leaders when their power both, insulates and isolates them? “Yes, it can happen. I would say two things that leaders must understand— learning is a continuous process. You never arrive. The second thing is to listen. Listen. Listen. Listen to your people, listen to your team, listen to your competitors…The customer tells you on the ground what they want. Your team tells you what is happening on the ground and competitors tell you what it is they’re doing that’s going right for them.” As a leader she herself was always approachable and amenable to listening, she says. “Understanding people is my passion.”