PepsiCo’s new CEO adds morality
to the company’s portfolio
Nooyi appeared on the cover of the March Striving for balance
issue of Fortune magazine with a glowing Though she has been at the helm for less SUpPPrLoIER cover line (“What makes Pepsi great? An inside than two years, Nooyi is responsible for much look at how Indra Nooyi has transformed an of her company’s current portfolio. While file
American business icon”) and an equally pos- PepsiCo’s mergers and aquisitions chief, she Company: PepsiCo Inc.
itive endorsement from the article’s writer. led the charge in selling off businesses such as CEO: Indra Nooyi
“What’s striking is that she’s so different than KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell and shifting the Founded: 1965
any other CEO I’ve met,” says Fortune senior focus to healthier eating, acquiring juice- Number of employees: 180,000 worldwide
editor Betsy Morris. “She could have been an maker Tropicana and Quaker Oats, maker of Address: 700 Anderson Hill Road,
actress. She’s a born performer. She could’ve Gatorade. The company’s portfolio today Purchase, NY 10577; (914) 253-2000;
been a politician. I think she’d make a very includes products such as G2 (low-calorie www.pepsico.com
interesting Secretary of State. I can see why Gatorade), Naked Juice and SunChips, as well Products at Costco: Pepsi, Mountain Dew,
they say she can talk anybody into anything.” as the iconic soda pop. Nooyi set a goal of Brisk tea, Aquafina, Quaker (cereals, granola
It is heady stuff for a new CEO, but when having 50 percent of the company’s U.S. port- bars), Tropicana (juices), Gatorade, Frito-Lay
Nooyi is shown the magazine’s cover, she is folio be “good for you” products by 2010. (chips, popcorn, pretzels)
visibly uncomfortable, the only such moment “Our goal is to nourish consumers,” says Comments about Costco: “I went to see Jim
during an hour-long interview with The Costco Nooyi, the first female CEO in the company’s Sinegal once as part of a tour. He spent three
Connection in March at her office in Purchase, history. “If I want to be a major factor in your hours with me. In those three hours I felt
New York. “In five years, if something like this eating or drinking habits, I have to provide mentored by him because he explained things
came out, I guess I would be more comfort- balance. I have to provide fun for your eats to me that I would not have gotten [otherwise].
able,” says Nooyi. “I am just getting my feet because you deserve treats, but I also have to It was amazing what I took away from it.”
wet. I am Pearning myestripes. I rwant thosfe provide healthy eats because I need to make woitrhma ance purpBy Roichard Dseitsech
stripes to be bright. I want them screaming.
Then you can write about me. The part that
talks about the company, its culture, its legacy,
that part is fine. But the whole story, when you
write it through me as a personality, worries
me. Of course I am the face of PepsiCo and I
accept that responsibility and the privilege,
but I think at the end of the day I would love
for these stories to wait three to five years.”
sure you remain healthy so that you can be
our consumer forever. A healthy consumer is
the best consumer for us.
“I recognize fully that delivering shareholder value is paramount. But doing it the
right way was critically important to me. It is
performance with purpose. The fact that we
have treats to healthy eats is what is driving
our growth.”
Quintessential global citizen
A self-described product of a middle-class conservative Brahmin home in Madras
(now Chennai), India, Nooyi arrived in the
United States in 1978 to do postgraduate
work at the Yale School of Management. Jobs
at the Boston Consulting Group, Motorola,
and Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) followed
before she joined PepsiCo in 1994. As a
daughter of India who is now a U.S. citizen
living in Connecticut, Nooyi, who speaks
seven languages, is the quintessential global
citizen. Growing up, Nooyi says, her mother
would challenge her and her sister at the dinner table on what they would do if they were
elected prime minister or president of India.
The big question was more vexing: What
would you do to change the world?
“I grew up a product of a nurturing culture with a stay-at-a-home mother [her father
was an accountant],” says Nooyi, the highest-ranking Indian-born woman in corporate
