StanChart hires Zarin Daruwala as India CEO

It's not usual for a top banker of one of the country's largest private bank to stand unassumingly in the crowd at the bank's public events. But Zarin Daruwala did exactly that when she was a key official in ICICI Bank's wholesale banking business. People close to her say she also has a huge risk appetite and a steely determination that only a few can match.

So, it wasn't a surprise when India's oldest foreign bank, Standard Chartered, chose Daruwala to head its operations in India. After all, this down-to-earth banker as president, wholesale banking business, ICICI Bank, managed a large proportion of the bank's advances.

However, Standard Chartered will have to wait for some more months, before she can formally join. Though the foreign bank put out a release on Tuesday naming her the new country chief, the appointment is subject to regulatory approval. Besides, she will have to serve out her notice period and wait out the gardening leave, said sources close to her. The 50-year old banker resigned from her position in ICICI Bank on Tuesday, after being with the bank, her first job, for 26 years.

Daruwala is known to be a relationship-sales person. That is, while most sales people close the deal and move on, she would continue to maintain a good relationship with her clients over the years.

A former colleague recalls her tenacity: one of her corporate clients required a specific product from the bank for its employees. The product was at the blueprint stage and the launch wasn't expected for some time. However, she pushed her colleague to deliver the product even before the deadline.

Daruwala is joining Standard Chartered at a time when the bank is in the news for the wrong reasons. It is axing 15,000 jobs worldwide, and some retrenchment will take place in India as well. The bank had announced that it would reduce single-name concentrations and unsecured retail and corporate business, coupled with more active reduction in China, India and commodities exposures. Its India operation has large exposure to infrastructure and metals sector, some of which could default. It has an exposure of $2.5 billion to Essar group alone.

She is a chartered accountant and a company secretary. Daruwala joined ICICI Ltd, the infrastructure financer, in 1989 as a management trainee and worked in almost all verticals in the organisation that later became a bank in 1994.