How night college turned an SBI sweeper into an Assistant General Manager

Pratiksha Tondwalkar enrolled in a night college in Mumbai’s Vikhroli area while working as a sweeper at a State Bank of India branch, a decision that eventually helped her rise to Assistant General Manager at the bank.

Tondwalkar, born in Pune in 1964, was married young and left school after Class 7. Widowed at 20 after her husband died in a road accident, she was left to raise their one-year-old son alone. She joined SBI as a sweeper in 1985, earning around Rs 60 to Rs 65 a month cleaning toilets and mopping the branch’s three floors each morning before it opened at 8:30 am, and later worked at a shoe manufacturing unit to make ends meet.

Working inside the bank exposed her to educated officers and clerks, convincing her that education could change her circumstances despite having missed out on schooling due to poverty and early marriage. After her working hours, she studied at night college, cleared her Class 12 examinations, and later completed a degree in Psychology through another night college.

Her story is remembered as one of the most inspiring at SBI, tracing a path from cleaning the bank’s toilets to holding a senior management position within the same institution.