The American Dream of Indra Nooyi, Former CEO of PepsiCo.
A look back at the career of an exceptional woman who perfectly embodies the American dream.
When Indra Nooyi took the helm at PepsiCo in 2006, she was as strange as a UFO. She was the first woman to lead a global consumer products giant. Born in Madras into a middle-class family, she is the perfect embodiment of the “American Dream”.
Indra Nooyi, one of the first generation of women in her family to be educated and work, came to the United States at age 20 to attend Yale Business School. She worked as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton and BCG, before joining industry champions Motorola of the US and Asea Brown Boveri of Europe. She is also a UFO because the vision of the company she defends is more respectful of health and the environment.
Before taking over PepsiCo (Lay's, Doritos), Indra Nooyi pushed for the acquisition of Tropicana and Quaker Oats to rebalance the portfolio towards healthier products.
A double challenge for Indra Nooyi as head of PepsiCo
When she became CEO, PepsiCo faced a double challenge: on the one hand, PepsiCo had a perennial complex with its Atlanta-based rival, Coca-Cola, which had a much better track record and profits. On the other hand, it is associated, like most of its competitors, with junk food, and accused of being indirectly responsible for the obesity problems of millions of consumers.
Indra Nooyi built her strategic plan around this change of direction (“Performance with Purpose”). She is giving PepsiCo a global R&D division in charge of rethinking the composition of all its products and is hiring an executive from the pharmaceutical industry to lead it. It is strengthening its data capabilities to accelerate innovation and defend itself against the arrival of new niche brands.
Indra Nooyi is facing resistance from investors who criticize her for not caring enough about profitability. Among them, the activist Nelson Peltz advocated - in vain - a split of the company between its snacking and beverage activities. In the end, when she left PepsiCo in 2018, she could boast of having increased PepsiCo's capitalization by $57 billion and its net income by 80%.
Indra Nooyi's journey, which had to polish the outspokenness of her early days, takes her back to the America of the 1980s and 1990s, from the Midwest, where she started her professional life, to the very Wasp New England: in some towns in Connecticut, some notables take a dim view of the arrival of a family of color.
She also recounts the difficulty of reconciling career and family - despite the support of her husband Raj -, the failed parent-teacher meetings, the reproaches of her daughters, the bags full of documents that she brings home at night...
And above all, how she has tried to build a different management style, more attentive to others, influenced by her education. Concerned about the importance of elders, Indra Nooyi does not hesitate to write to the parents of her group managers to thank them for the gift to the company through their children.
Finally, well before the #MeToo wave, Indra Nooyi testifies to the difficulties she sometimes had to impose herself as a woman CEO, how she had to evade certain rude words or interruptions during her speeches, disapprove of certain macho ads or accept a makeover to accept to be ... more listened to.
Her book “My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future” is a must-read for those who want to learn more about this exceptional woman.
Some reading
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Don’t Ask for Permission, Follow Your Own Path As Kamala Harris Has Always Done. This is the only way to achieve your most ambitious goals.
Elizabeth II: From the British Empire to the Disunited Kingdom. She leaves the throne to Charles III who should take up multiple challenges.