There are very few leaders who inspire people with not just what they achieve but also how in their journey to accomplishing those goals, they never compromise of their values and principles. One such rare leader is O.P. Bhatt, Chairman, State Bank of India. Almost soon after he took over as Chairman of SBI, he brought about enormous changes in the way the bank functioned until now and launched an aggressive advertising campaign. The purpose of the advertisement was to win back alienated customers and attract new customers. A man of values, he was very clear on a basic point. Though new advertisements were needed to attract customers, he wanted to do all this without any lies, hyperboles, boasts, which SBI did not do.

SBI has a customer base of more than 100 million middle-class and middle-aged customers who are not High Networth Individuals (HNIs), yuppies or the affluent. Even with swanky banks to compete with, SBI's top 600-700 branches have proved better than any other bank's branches on any parameter of performance. While others plan on expanding their business, Bhatt's focus has been to provide quality service to the customers. He doesn't believe in expansion just for the sake of it. With this in mind, he has stopped acquiring banks abroad for the time being. At the same time, he would be keeping a look out for any good opportunity.

In the meanwhile Bhatt is revamping SBI's rural banking focus and for that he has decided to set up 5,000-6,000 rural kiosks and has started new rural pilot initiatives to encourage banking habits among the rural masses. Besides setting up kiosks, SBI is also issuing 'smart plain' cards with the help of which farmers can do banking transactions with the cards. It will be in the villages where there is no branch and there will be a person in-charge who may be a local school teacher, local shop keeper. SBI has already created a new business group known as 'Rural Business Group' headed by a Deputy Managing Director. The pilot projects are being run in states like Mizoram, Uttaranchal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and the bank plans to extend it to all over the country.

A good leader plans ahead and then goes ahead and achieves them. Bhatt too is one such rare breed of leaders who has planned his move years ahead. In his 5 year tenure with SBI, he wants to protect his market share and everything he does is guided by that motive. He plans to stop the slide in the market share of SBI as a standalone entity and of the SBI group. Currently, SBI has a market share of around 16% and the SBI Group has about 20%. He want the SBI group to gain at least 1% market share every year, out of which SBI should get something over 0.50%. Bhatt is leader who is an inspiration to all those who across him. One can only look upto such a dynamic leader and hope to imbibe his qualities.