She loved shopping. She wanted to live a life of domestic bliss, have lots of children and sit home to relax. But Kalpana Morparia's life turned out like nothing she expected it to be. For someone who admits being initially lazy to work to becoming a go-getter, it was almost as though the latent energy and ambition in her was waiting to be kindled. Opportunities knocked, she took them up and this led to the transformation of an individual who had to be pushed through school and even college.
She loved shopping. She wanted to live a life of domestic bliss, have lots of children and sit home to relax. But Kalpana Morparia's life turned out like nothing she expected it to be. For someone who admits being initially lazy to work to becoming a go-getter, it was almost as though the latent energy and ambition in her was waiting to be kindled. Opportunities knocked, she took them up and this led to the transformation of an individual who had to be pushed through school and even college.
With a storied career at ICICI and then a pivotal role in JPMorgan's India success, Kalpana has worked through the two respected organisations. Having deviated from her doing-nothing ambition to being a busy and ambitious banker, she sums her life like this: "My life is all about the time I spent at work. I strongly believe that if you really want something to happen, you can make it happen. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself."
Since Kalpana wasn't keen to specifically work anywhere, she sat home for a few months until she realised household chores were not her cup of tea. As a young, restless twenty-year old, she realised she needed to take up something new to learn. She took up teaching for a few months. Later when she got bored of that, Kalpana enrolled into Government Law College. She was good at law, and this would eventually drive her career chart in the corporate world. But her career didn't take off quickly and Kalpana too wasn't in a hurry. She got married young just as she had dreamt of. Luckily for her, in this home too she found support and encouragement in her husband and mother-in-law. She continued her law studies. "After I completed my law degree, one day I heard there were openings at ICICI in the legal department. So I applied."
This was 1975. "Until I joined ICICI, I never dreamed big. But once I was there and started doing well, I was singularly driven by the purpose of the organisation. I wanted to be part of the organisation that was to finance the industrialisation of the country and to shape the financial services industry."
She joined as legal officer. Kalpana's entry into ICICI happened at a time the organisation was smaller than 350 people. Her growth was steady and gradual. As the bank expanded, the legal officer's role also became an important link in disbursing funds to the companies the bank shortlisted.
In 1996, she became the general manager at ICICI. In 2004, she became executive director in 2001. In 2004, she was appointed as deputy managing director and became joint managing director in 2006. But the first two decades of her working life at the bank transformed her personality, streamlined her objectives, and changed her career. She became obsessed with her work.
"I strongly believe that if you really want something to happen, you can make it happen. I have spent 38 years working. I do not care for all this debate about work-life balance because, for me, life has always been work." Kalpana gave all her life to working. She embraced her successes, perhaps somewhere surprised that the person who didn't want to work at all was actually so capable of succeeding at her work.
"I always felt I was handicapped right from the beginning as I had joined a financial services industry with an academic background in law. I always felt I wasn't as highly skilled as my colleagues who had management degrees. That drove me much more and I put in a lot more effort." She did it so well that her work and craft was soon identified by former CEO of the bank and now non-executive chairman K V Kamath who Kalpana would later say "shaped my career the most". Within 15 months of joining ICICI, when she was just 26-year-old, Kalpana was asked to supervise the southern region office. "I was so happy in my field job that I did not feel like moving to another role. I insisted on not wanting to do it. Perhaps at the time I was naïve to see what new roles would mean for me," she narrates. But the organisation had decided and there was no looking back. And the rest, as they say is history.
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 "Kalpana Morparia")
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