The first woman chief of the largest state-owned Indian bank, SBI, has packed more work than one would have expected in the two years she has been in the corner office.

Top banker Arundhati Bhattacharya , 59, rarely stumbles over words. That too to clinch a sale. In September 1996, when she moved to the US on a transfer posting, juggling audit functions and settling the family, she had experienced a rare buyer's dilemma. The SBI honcho had to step into a New York street to buy a perambulator for her daughter. But when none of the Big Apple's shopkeepers heard of the word, a determined Bhattacharya gestured a push cart, pulled out a picture of her daughter and waved it in front of a puzzled salesperson who mumbled: "Oh! you mean a stroller?" The deal was struck in a matter of minutes.

"Every posting has challenges in terms of language, culture, food habits and the way of working," grins Bhattacharya, who worked in almost all the regions of the country. In her over four years stint in the US, she got used to right hand driving, turn a water tap to the left and, yes, the proficient ways of the global financial centre in the world's largest economy. "The way they worked is very professional in terms of detailed policies, procedures and meticulous documentations of everything," says Bhattacharya from her 18th floor corner room at SBI's headquarters in Mumbai's Nariman Point.

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It is not at all easy to hop from one city to another and from one function to another especially for a career woman with a very young child. But she braved all the challenges that came her way in a near four-decade-long career. Her extremely methodical way of working, people skills and a highly competitive spirit have stood her in good stead. Many say reaching the top slot in a male-dominated PSU banking set up and that, too, in the country's largest bank with over Rs 20 lakh crore assets size, is no mean achievement.

In the last two years, she managed to put a check on SBI's non-performing assets, focuss on profitable growth and also introduced new initiatives in the digital banking space. "She is laying a good foundation for the bank, especially in the mobile-driven new banking landscape," says Vimal Bhandari, an old IL&FS hand, and a former country head of AEGON India.

The numbers speak for themselves. SBI's net profit jumped 20 per cent to Rs 13,102 crore, deposits were up by 13 per cent at Rs 15.76 lakh crore, retail advances climbed 15 per cent at Rs 2.72 lakh crore and NPAs are down from 4.95 per cent to 4.25 per cent in March 2015. Bhattacharya has managed to deliver an encouraging performance despite the challenging economic environment. The stamp of approval comes from none other than Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC. "You will steer the bank to greater heights," said Parekh in a recent book release function.

"She is able to keep every constituent of the bank in good humor. Be it customers, employees, government (as owner) or the RBI," says a former SBI chairman. Today, Bhattacharya is fixated on the six strategic goals she set for the bank two years ago. "We have changed the way we do project screening and also monitoring," she says. The focused approach on NPAs has not only resulted in curbing bad assets growth, but has also helped in reducing gross NPAs by 70 basis points to 4.25 per cent in March this year.

Bhattacharya also did not hesitate to let go of a few defaulters, such as Hotel Leela and Bharati Shipyard, by selling them to asset reconstruction companies. In fact, the message has been clear to promoters: either come to the table and negotiate or deal with recovery companies. She has also introduced dynamic evaluation of larger projects to monitor any signs of stress or risks in advance.

Bhattacharya is laying the foundation for transforming the 208-year old public sector bank to make it appealing for the younger generation. The bank's origins date back to 1806 when Bank of Calcutta was set up. In 1921, Bank of Calcutta along with two other banks were merged to form Imperial bank of India, which then became State Bank of India in 1955 when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) took majority ownership in the bank. Within months of taking charge, Bhattacharya cut the ribbon for half a dozen fully digital branches where a kiosk machine scans a customer's fingerprint, saves digital signature, takes a picture and scans required documents. There is absolutely minimum human intervention. She is now scaling up such cost-effective branches to 250 in the current year that would include a mix of new and existing branches. The task is cut out for the bank, which has 16,000-plus branches across the country. A fortnight ago, she also launched a mobile wallet to compete with the new generation private banks and also the PayTMs of the world in the retail payments space.