Dinesh Kumar Khara takes the helm as chairman of State Bank of India at a challenging time.
Rajnish Kumar, who stepped down after completing his three-year term in October, had to batten down the hatches as the bank faced up to Covid-19 in one of the world’s worst-affected countries. Now Khara must find a way to pilot the bank out of the pandemic in preparation for a post-virus future.
He has experience on his side. Khara joined SBI as a probationary officer in 1984 and has been a managing director since 2016, covering the global banking and subsidiaries unit. He was instrumental in the multi-sided merger that Arundhati Bhattacharya engineered during her spell as chairman.
Few can claim to know the ins and outs of the bank better than Khara.
Poverty challenges
SBI faces challenges on an altogether different scale to most institutions.
