Kalpana Morparia is a banker with difference. She was associated with ICICI Bank for thirty three years. Presently she is the Chief operating officer of JP Morgan. Kalpana serves as an independent director on the Boards of several leading Indian companies.
Early life of Kalpana Morparia
Kalpana Morparia was born on 30th May 1949 in a Lohana family of Bhawandas and Lakshmiben Tanna. At the age of 16 she completed her schooling and went to Sophia College for Women to study Science and by 1970 she was a B Sc graduate with chemistry. She also has a degree in law.
Career of Kalpana Morparia
She has 34 years of experience with ICICI Group. She has held important positions. She has been instrumental in the ICICI Group`s major corporate structuring initiative - the merger of ICICI Limited with ICICI Bank, to create India`s second largest bank.
She took up teaching after completing graduation but had to take a break for 11-12 months as she developed speech complications and had to remain confined to home. She got married to Jaisingh. She completed her law and joined in 1974 a law firm named Matubhai Jamiyatram and Madon, a law firm at no pay. Then she came to know about he vacancy at ICICI in the legal department.
The management began to entrust her with various responsibilities. In 1991 the management sent her to the USA to study capital market in America where she worked at New York`s David Polk and Wardwell for three months
Kalpana in no time perfected the art of negotiation and this helped her while negotiating for joint venture. She was responsible for the birth of ICICI bank which she got listed with the New York Exchange in 1999 and in 2002 facilitated the merger of ICICI bank with ICICI.
She worked in the legal department of ICICI from 1975 to 1994. In 1996 she was designated as General Manager. Then she was in charge of the legal, planning, treasury and corporate communications departments. In 1998, she was designated a Senior General Manager of ICICI. She joined the Board of Directors of ICICI in May 2001. In May 2002 the board appointed Ms. Morparia as an Executive Director. Again in 2006 April she was designated as the Deputy Managing director. Thereafter she was made the joint Managing Director. Then she became the in charge of the Corporate Centre which includes transaction processing and operations for wholesale, retail, rural and international banking, strategy, risk management, compliance, audit, legal, finance, treasury, secretarial, human resources management, corporate communications and facilities management and administration functions. For a period of five years from June 1st 2007 she has been appointed as the Chief Strategy and Communications Officer.
Today she is the CEO of J P Morgan, she is also the independent Director of Dr. Reddy`s Lab, Bennet & Colman, CMC Limited of Tata Consultancy. She looks after the philanthropic work of Bharati Foundation run by Sunil Mittal of Airtel. It is engaged with construction of schools in states like Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu etc and adopts neglected schools.
