How Chase is supporting children’s literacy in the UK

Sanoke Viswanathan, the CEO of Chase bank in the UK, is on a mission to instil the rudiments of good English in youngsters around the country. He speaks to Andy Martin

Viswanathan started out on his family’s farm in India (John Nguyen/JNVisuals)

It says something about the state of literacy in this country when an American-owned bank has to step in and help us out with at least two of the three Rs – reading and writing (maybe ’rithmetic will be next). But, to be fair, I am grateful to Sanoke Viswanathan, the CEO of Chase in the UK, for chipping in to what is a huge collective effort to instil the rudiments of good English in youngsters around the country. My only qualm is that we are going to end up writing “sidewalk” and “elevator” and spelling “colour” without the “u”.

He is now based in Canary Wharf, but Sanoke (rhymes with “bloke”) Viswanathan was born in Chennai in the south of India where he grew up on his parents’ poultry farm, speaking Tamil but going to an English school. “If anything breaks down on a farm, you have to fix it yourself,” he recalls. His father – “there was nothing he couldn’t fix” – inspired him to desert the chickens in favour of studying mechanical engineering at the elite Indian Institute of Technology.

He got his BTech in 1996, a period when India was liberalising and privatising and achieving high economic growth. “It was a great time to learn about business,” says Viswanathan.