New Delhi: Soft drink major PepsiCo's India born CEO Indra Nooyi is amongst those women who have shattered the glass ceiling to lead one of America's largest corporation, according to Fortune magazine' s latest ranking. PepsiCo chair and CEO Indra Nooyi has been placed second in Fortune magazine's latest Most Powerful Women in Business rankings.Under Nooyi's guidance and leadership, PepsiCo has expanded beyond the flat domestic soda business, entering fast-growing categories such as yogurt and hummus. Today, PepsiCo boasts of being a $22 billion brand.Indra Nooyi was born on Oct. 28, 1955 in Chennai and completed her schooling from Holy Angels School, Madras and did B.Sc in chemistry from madras Christian college. She subsequently earned a masters degree in finance and marketing from IIM Calcutta. Nooyi also holds a master degree in public and private management from the Yale school of management.As the head of strategy at PepsiCo, she was instrumental in much of its restructuring. During her stint, PepsiCo sold off the restaurant business and spun off its bottling operations, and acquired new businesses like Tropicana and Quaker Oats. In 2006, she was named CEO, only the fifth in PepsiCo's history. Under his leadership, the company has achieved consistent growth over the years. Nooyi is also credited to push PepsiCo to expand its portfolio beyond soda and potato chips into “good for you” food segment which includes soft drinks with less calories, chips with less sodium or yoghurt with more fruit. But that doesn't mean she doesn't love Pepsi-Cola, Nooyi said in an interview. "I'm the only person who drinks blue-can Pepsi on this floor," she said of regular Pepsi-Cola, gesturing to the company's executive offices. "I drink blue-can Pepsi exclusively." Regarding diversification, she says the company will keep on adding healthier brands and products that can be consumed morning, noon and night.According to her, PepsiCo's acquisition of Russian dairy Wimm-Bill-Dann helped the company delve into yogurts and grain-enriched dairy products that many people are consuming as meals. "I will make a prediction, that anybody who's in the [beverage business] today will get into dairy, without a doubt," she said.She says PepsiCo is pursuing a dual strategy for cola. The company is spending money to maintain its base business and at the same time searching for a breakthrough in sweeteners that will yield a naturally sweetened, zero-calorie cola, what Nooyi calls "the ultimate nirvana."Nooyi says her rise to the top follows several sacrifices in managing her career and her family. Nooyi credits her husband for his support; she says he took on half of her workload at home so she could continue building her career.Here are 15 best quotes from her on leadership, family and work-life balance. Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader. I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said, 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18,' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president.To lead in an ever-changing world, Nooyi says, leaders must adapt and stay nimble.I'm very honest - brutally honest. I always look at things from their point of view as well as mine. And I know when to walk away. Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that.I think innovation as a discipline needs to go back and get rethought and revived. There are so many models to talk about innovation, there are so many typologies of innovation, and you have to find a good innovation metric that truly captures the innovation performance of a company.My father was an absolutely wonderful human being. From him I learned to always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. When I grew up there was no web, blogging or tweeting. In fact, where I grew up there was not even television! I met a lot of my friends in school and in college, and they are still my friends today. When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response. As a leader, I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however, I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future. I pick up the details that drive the organization insane. But sweating the details is more important than anything else. Anything that's done to address unemployment in terms of massive stimulus spending is going to exacerbate deficits. And anything that's done to address deficits in the short-term is going to exacerbate unemployment.The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don't improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant. The one thing I have learned as a CEO is that leadership at various levels is vastly different. When I was leading a function or a business, there were certain demands and requirements to be a leader. As you move up the organization, the requirements for leading that organization don't grow vertically; they grow exponentially. We are in a bit of a policy box and it's going to require us being willing to give up one of the two, which is it's okay to take on more deficits but lets put in some massive spending. Alternatively to say, 'we're going to go through structural unemployment for a while because we want to address deficits.'
Updated on: February 18, 2014 14:21 IST
