( Note: The picture you see above is a painting of Indra Nooyi. In November 2019, a year after she retired as CEO of PepsiCo, she was inducted, along with Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos, into the national portrait gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the hallowed cultural and heritage institutions in the US. A very rare honor for an Indian-American. This portrait was painted by John Freeman. Behind Indra, there is a picture of her parents, a picture of her husband and kids, a picture of a PepsiCo annual report, and a souvenir from her alma mater – a Yale University hat. The four most important things in her life.)
Unlike fiction, we don’t have to worry about spoiler alerts when writing about autobiographies, especially, if the person in question is as iconic, popular, and so well known as Indra Nooyi, the ex-chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. She has just published her autobiography. Generally, I refrain from buying a book the day it is released. In the past few years, I recall doing so only once, and that was last year when the first volume of Barack Obama’s autobiography “The promised land” came out in November. Indra Nooyi’s personal memoir is the second such buy. Amazon delivered the book last Friday evening. I came home after my swim, and picked the package near the door, opened it to take a quick peek at the cover. It had an impressive photo of Indra, dressed in a black outfit, looking half her age and sporting her trademark beaming smile. I continued to read a few paragraphs from the introduction without even bothering to sit down. I instinctively knew this was going to be an engaging read. I quickly jumped into the shower, warmed up a decent dinner, and curled into my recliner with the book at around 10 PM, hoping to finish at least a few chapters, if not more. That was not how it turned out to be. In a marathon reading stretch of six hours, I finished the whole book at 4 AM. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t moved from my sitting position, except perhaps once or twice for a sip of water. The book was clearly “unputdownable” — pardon me for this clichéd word of praise, but that’s what it was. When I closed the book, rubbed my eyes, a clear essential picture of Indra’s phenomenal life story emerged. In clear, succinct prose, written in collaboration with a writing partner, she managed to bring out the core aspects of her growth, education, and upbringing, and the forces that molded her into what she eventually became. I have read somewhere that “an autobiography is usually honest, but never truthful”. I cannot agree more; but Indra’s autobiography ‘Life in full’, is an exception; in this volume, there is an irresistible blend of honesty and truthfulness flowing from each page, giving the book a rare authenticity among similar memoirs, that are often vindictive, superficial, or full of self-praise.
For long, I have been a great admirer of Indra Nooyi for what she has become and achieved in the last few decades. Her entire life has been a journey of learning, growing, and flowering, reaching its crescendo in 2006. For twelve long years, between 2006 and 2018, the longest tenure of any CEO at PepsiCo, Indra held and steered the gargantuan business ship, one of the largest and most widely recognized brands in the world. Responsible for the welfare of a quarter-million employees, managed revenues upwards of 65 billion dollars and changed the very perception of how a food & beverage industry should function, Indra’s performance, her uncomplicated demeanor, astounding candor, inner strength, well-thought-out views, and initiatives on gender equality and family care, has left an indelible mark on the business landscape across the globe, especially in corporate America, which traditionally has been a bastion of male leaders. I was surprised, that she had written a memoir only 300 pages long. For a life as distinguished as hers, it should have been longer. But then you realize, her autobiography reflects the kind of lady she is: always grounded and clear about what is important and what is not. Her memoir is not one long list of corporate achievements, or business intrigues, except a few, that are essential and crucial to understanding her work. The book is more about her steady growth to freedom and responsibilities in a business world that is predominantly male-driven. It is a story of curiosity, grit, perseverance, and willingness to listen and learn.
In the first fifty pages of the book, Indra sketches a beautiful picture of her childhood in Chennai. It is a typical brahmin household, and I could relate to most of it: A comfortable home in a predominant brahmin locality, the sweltering heat of Chennai summers, the constant buzz of family and people around, the inevitable gossip, the nonchalant discipline, the emotional scaffolding and the unassuming love that is ever-present, memories of the cosy dinners eaten directly from the mother’s hand, the strict rules of do’s and don’t’s impartially applied to all children, the constant presence of siblings, the intense focus on learning and books, and many more such nuances of daily life. Indra particularly remembers her Grandfather, her well-wisher, and source of strength. It was him who encouraged both Indra and her sister Chandrika to open their wings and dream big. Those initial seeds are important. Indra lists her Grandfather (Thaatha) in the list of dedications on the front page. Throughout the book, Indra never forgets the numerous instances of grace, support, mentorship, and direction she received from both within the family and at work. Her managers have always supported her, sometimes going out of the way. She recalls with emotion how two male managers from Mettur Beardsell, a textile company that gave her the first break after her MBA at IIM, were so thoughtful and kind to bring her tea and breakfast as she stood in the long line to get a visa token at the US embassy in Chennai, much to the amazement of others in the line. Those days (even today, perhaps) standing in those long queues was a nightly ritual, for anyone seeking a US visa. At every step in Indra’s growth, there are managers and friends who have given her the necessary counsel, strength, and courage. But Indra’s singular strength has been her willingness to listen and apply her intelligence to the situation at hand. Without this beautiful quality, no help could have been of any consequence.
The anchor in Indra’s life is her Mom. She remembers the day in 2005 when she went home to announce she had become the President of PepsiCo, the second top position in the company. Her Mom stopped Indra midway through her excitement and sent her to the grocery store to buy milk. An irritated and fuming, Indra, did what was asked, but later confronted her mom for being so insensitive to her achievement. Her mom’s spontaneous response reverberated and became the touchstone of Indra’s professional life for a long time: “What you are at the office, you will leave at the garage, when you come home, you are a wife, mother, and a daughter”. It was only after Indra’s retirement, in 2019, and watching her daughter courted by Presidents and prime minister’s, her mom one day quietly came into Indra’s room, and said: “you know what, you are better off helping the world. Don’t worry about home”. To Indra, that completed a circle — a sign of approval and acknowledgment from the woman she loved, admired, and respected the most.
As CEO, Indra’s business achievements with PepsiCo are legendary and widely known. The mergers, the acquisitions, the disinvestments, the redefinition of the corporate motto from mere performance to “performance with a purpose”, the realignment of snack portfolio towards more nutritional and safer alternatives, the initiatives on diversity and equality, the complete overhaul of the IT systems, and many more have helped PepsiCo virtually reinvent itself in the new millennium. But underlying all these achievements were a few core values that Indra passionately believed in. First, she was a people person and refused to consider employees merely as resources to a profitable end. The word resource itself is demeaning because it indicates that the person is a dispensable cog in the wheel and not a real person. She believed that every employee should be able to bring their whole selves to work, and not just a disgruntled, half-attentive professional self. This is especially true for women, who often have to juggle between motherhood, family, and work, and sacrifice work to balance out the other two. Indra focussed her employee initiatives at PepsiCo on removing the barriers between different compartments in life. She succeeded to a large extent. Indra, herself, was a beneficiary of such generous corporate support during crucial times in her life. When her father was ill and dying in Chennai, the company gave her six months of paid time to nurture her father, a gesture she remembers with gratitude and deep respect because it not only saved her career but also gave her the freedom and personal satisfaction of having taken care of her father, which was supremely important to her sense of well-being.
Secondly, Indra believed that for any initiative to succeed, one must have emotional buy-in from the stakeholders. And this is applicable to everything and everyone. If an employee initiative is to succeed, it must touch the emotional core of the employees first and only then be scaffolded by policies and rules. If the former is not present, then no amount of the latter will work out as planned. When Indra rethought PepsiCo’s goal to become Performance with Purpose (PwP), she had a tough time convincing different stakeholders of the company on why she believed that such an emotional investment in purpose is the way forward for a company of PepsiCo’s size and reach. PwP was an emotional commitment as far as the financial stakeholders were concerned, and it was Indra’s prerogative to show them that without such a commitment, future profitability will be at stake. Initially, there was tremendous pushback, but slowly, as she describes in the book, her own passion for the idea, value systems, and pitch-perfect articulation of the why and what of PwP, turned the wheels of the massive PepsiCo juggernaut rolling towards this new goal. Once the emotions were managed, the rest happened. This is an important CEO lesson and to all of us, who wish to bring about change in some manner.
Thirdly, stemming from her focus on work-life balance mentioned above, Indra believed that a company’s success is closely tied with the success of the society in which it does its business. If the environment is polluted, if hygiene and nutrition are sacrificed, if people don’t get to engage more with the family and kids, then it is essentially a No-Win situation for all. Therefore, Indra’s business decisions, though focussed on the profits and shareholder stakes, were always driven by the greater good of society, exemplified by the motto — Performance with a Purpose. she created a new position within PepsiCo called the Chief Scientific Officer to discover ways of bringing down the content of salt, sugar, and other ingredients which is proven to have deleterious effects on health. She scouted for the right person to lead this effort and found Dr. Mehmood khan, who was then leading the R&D effort for a Japanese Pharma company, to head it. Dr. Khan’s charter was to retain the same great taste that consumers have come to expect out of PepsiCo’s products but find means to reduce or substitute the ingredients which can cause potential harm. This was a bold initiative, especially since the company was good well and had no compelling reason to change focus, but Indra went ahead with it nonetheless. It proved to be a turning point in PepsiCo’s history. The reinvention of healthy snacks proved to be a game-changer, the consumer base increased and profits soared. No one else before Indra’s time had the vision and the drive to do this. Dr. Khan brought in the necessary innovations, and Indra was able to realize her vision of creating a healthier PepsiCo.
The fourth aspect of Indra’s core principles is the focus on continuous learning. There is a wonderful anecdote that illustrates this quality. During her tenure as CEO, Indra was once invited to address a trade expo organized by the Bowling proprietors association of America. PepsiCo had snack and Beverage contracts with over thirty-four hundred Bowling centers, a big deal indeed. But Indra knew nothing about bowling. During the next two weeks, she went out bowling a few times, read about the game, talked to staff and players — all this to get a good sense of what moves the group she was about to address. At her level, she could have just walked up to the podium and made some perfunctory remarks on the good Pepsi’s association with the bowling centers, and so on and got away with the speech; but no, she put in the learning effort to understand the domain, before, she could honestly and efficiently speak in front of a bowling audience. This commitment to continuous learning is vital for everyone. Furthermore, each day she went to work at the headquarters, or during travel, Indra would carry two or three bags full of reading material, things that she needs to review, read, or catch up on. There was a running joke in PepsiCo that Indra was “Bag lady”. Rarely would she travel without bags full of material to read and think about? She demonstrated that Learning never stops, no matter what level you reach. From her first job at Beardsell, through Motorola, ABB, and then to PepsiCo, she never took the role for granted. At each step, she learned about the industry in-depth, often spending weeks talking to ground-level engineers, asking questions, making notes, and employing experts to teach her the science behind the products she was dealing with. Knowledge is power in business, the more hands-on one is, the better grasp of where the business is heading.
When I closed the book, I felt a sense of deep satisfaction and pride in Indra’s achievements, as though someone in my family has achieved all this. I realized that her journey, as an Indian, as a young girl from a conservative south Indian brahmin family, and the story of the path to learning, freedom, success, and fulfillment, isn’t just about timing or luck. It was more about the ability to harness her tremendous self-confidence, determination, and drive combined with an open mind, willingness to listen, and a generous heart, that led to where she is today. And of course, there was this mysterious quality in Indra that everyone who mentored her sensed, liked, and supported. Perhaps, it was her honesty, work ethic, curiosity; or her passion, and commitment to everything she did; or her unassuming and unpretentious demeanor; or her vision; we don’t know what exactly it was, but it was there, that elusive quality of excellence and trust which distinguishes the best from the rest. No school or education can tap that potential, it has to flower from within — one’s individuality, as we call it. What is even more surprising is that the majority of her mentors were men in power. Indra unconditionally acknowledges her gratitude to all the men who mentored her at the right time. There is not a trace of bitterness in her writing. Indra has absorbed and learned from everything life has had to offer. If at all there is any regret, it is not spending as much time as she would have liked with her two daughters Preeta and Tara, and husband — Raj Nooyi, of whom she writes with immense respect and love. But then, she is wise to realize that you cannot lead a 65 billion dollar company and also remain a mother twenty-four hours a day. Indra is retired now, but her days are still full of positive work. She is on the board of Amazon and few other companies, she works with federal and state governments on various initiatives and she is the only female member of the ICC ( International cricket council) – which is a game she loves and has played in her youth. And what’s more, she still sings the songs of the Beatles. It is a whole and full life.
I highly recommend this autobiography to everyone, especially youngsters. It is a book one can gift. Indra Nooyi’s life is a story that is at once elevating and grounded, and it vindicates the virtues of hard work, focus, and persistence with a touch of luck, not as a factor to be relied upon, but as a benediction that comes unasked like a spring breeze to wipe the sweat of our brows after having exercised our whole being in the effort at hand.
God bless…
Yours in mortality,
Bala