I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . You have been the ceo of pepsico for more than 10 years. Did you think when you were a young girl in india you were gonna grow up to be the ceo of a Large Company like pepsi . Well, ill tell you something. It is like a dream come true. I pinch myself every day to say, is this really happening to me . Because if you trace my roots and go back to where i was born and brought up, and to where i am today, those two points will never connect. And now to be here in the United States running such a Large Company, its almost in incredulous thing thats happened to me. So lets go back to india for a moment. So you grew up in a very close family, and when you were very young your mother would at the Kitchen Table say, well, why dont you pretend youre Prime Minister of india or something, what was the drill that she was trying to exhibit to you . I think she she was a very she is a very bright woman, and she didnt go to college because her parents didnt think girls should go to colleges, and they couldnt afford to send her to college. So in a way she lived vicariously through the daughters. So she kept pushing us to be whatever we wanted to be, dream big, but shed always tell us, but at 18, im getting you married off. But you can dream big until then. So at dinner table, virtually every day, shed sit down and have this conversation about, give me a speech as if you were the president. One day it would be Prime Minister, one day it would be chief minister. And shed always critique us. She never gave us a compliment. Shed just tell us, oh, no chief minister will do this. No Prime Minister will do this. So she kept pushing us to be better and better and better. And if we got one compliment from her, we said, wow, we must have done really well. So she really raised the bar constantly on us. And i think she gave us hopes, but then anchored us firmly into the conservative, south indian brahmin values of youve gotta get married at 18. Didnt happen, i wanna tell you. But thats what she kept telling us. So if you dont get married at 18, its a disgrace at that time . [laughs] it or not . You know, thats the way she positioned it for us. But i think the other side was my father and my grandfather said, do whatever you want. Dream, do whatever you want. But just get a good set of grades in school so that your mother can get you married off. So that was my upbringing. Okay. So we had these checks and balances at home. So you did get some degrees in india. And then you decided to get a degree from the yale school of management. Mm. When you said to your parents, im gonna go to yale, which is in connecticut, in United States, what did they say . This is perhaps the biggest mystery of them all because my conservative mother and my, you know, supportive father actually allowed me to come to the United States. Shocked the hell out of me. Because i would have thought my mother would have fasted for days and thrown a temper tantrum. Absolutely not. She actually came to the airport and saw me off. They even bought me an airline ticket, which even today i wonder how they did it. What caused them to do it. But they both were very supportive. They had enough people around here to sort of look up on me and make sure i had a support system. But they encouraged me to go and live out my dreams. How did you pick yale . You know, its interesting, there was in article in a Time Magazine or Something Like that which sort of talked about the yale school of management, the masters in public and private management, how to bring together the different sectors, and it was a beautiful article. And i read about it that the usis library in the Consulate Office in madras where i was growing up. I was so intrigued by the approach to education from yale som that i decided to apply to yale. All right. So when you graduated, you then began to go into various strategy kinds of positions. Where were you initially . I left yale and went to the Boston Consulting Group in chicago right. And spent six and a half years there. And perhaps one of my most formative experiences because being in strategy consulting, especially in bcg at that time, which was sort of the father of strategy, allowed me to see problems of companies in a holistic way. It wasnt Just Marketing or just operations or supply chain or whatever. I saw every aspect of the company. And it sort of gave me ten years of experience in six years. And i became a better person because of that. How did pepsico hear of you . A headhunter called me one day and said, pepsico would like to talk to you. And i came in and talked to pepsico and the rest is history. And they gave you the job of being in charge of strategy . Head of corporate strategy. Okay. So you did make some acquisitions that under your leadership as the head of strategy. One of them was gatorade. And or quaker oates which came with gatorade. Was that a good acquisition for you and were you happy to do it . It was one of the most brilliant acquisitions that we did as a company. Because it gave us gatorade which was an amazing isotonic beverage. Probably the best isotonic beverage in the world today for athletes. Isotonic means. . Sports drinks. Sports drinks. Okay. And so it gave us access to gatorade, and we could do all kinds of things with gatorade. We didnt have a good product in our portfolio. So that was good. But the bigger attraction was the quaker oats brand. In pepsico, we had no food brand that was good for you. And we needed a goodforyou brand in our portfolio. And we looked at the world, the best goodforyou brand, even today, is quaker oats. And we wanted the brand badly. So what was interesting is we wanted quaker oats and gatorade. Other Beverage Companies only wanted gatorade, didnt know what to do with quaker oats. Because we had both businesses, for us, the quaker oats company, which included quaker and gatorade, was an absolutely logical acquisition. So when i was a young person, i played sports, and in those days it was such a long time ago that the conventional wisdom was you were not supposed to drink anything during halftime because you would get a cramp. And so you were just supposed to sweat. And the idea of hydrating hadnt come along. So one time we played a team in australia, in lacrosse, and they had a different idea, to drink beer during halftime. [laughing] it worked. They did much better. We went to that approach. Gatorades better. Somebody gave you wrong information. You should actually hydrate when you play to avoid the cramps. But actu thats how gatorade was created. Thats right. But at that time or before gatorade, people didnt know that as much. What about tropicana . That was one of your ideas as well. How did the come about . 1997, we bought tropicana because we had no brand, no beverage brand, that was serving consumers before 10 a. M. In the morning. The first time somebody reached for a pepsico beverage was at 10 a. M. Which was either a pepsi or a mountain dew. So the first early hours of the morning, we had no product. And so tropicana, for us, was always on the radar as a brand that we needed in our portfolio for a breakfast beverage. So when tropicana came up for sale we grabbed it. I assume everybody comes up to you and says, well, make pepsi taste differently, make the fritolay chip different. You get advice from people all the time and do you ever listen to it . They give me ideas on products, how our existing products taste and what new products we ought to be developing. They give me ideas and feedback on our commercials. They give me ideas for commercials, packaging. I get ideas for everything. The most important thing is to keep both ears open. Because you never know if a nugget of an idea can actually translate to big success in the company. So one of the things ive learned is not to dismiss the ideas. I catalog all the ideas i get. Then i send it out to my people saying, hey, i listened to this group of people talk about our products and this is what i heard. Is there something here . Should we be doing something about it . So i listen to everybody. You do all the testing or some of the testing yourself . One of the greatest things about my job is i can actually taste and test products when theyre in their early stages. So just to give you an idea, during our annual planning cycles, i must taste somewhere between 50 to hundred products over three days. Whether snacks or beverages or quaker products or tropicana products. Everything that theyre thinking of launching over the next three years or five years, theyll show me prototypes. And, you know, i can give an opinion, not that my opinion is the only thing that counts, but i can give an opinion. On top of that, almost on a, id say, twice a month basis, our r and d people are bringing in new products for me to try. Because some Technology Breakthrough has happened or a product that exists in our system has been improved. So they wanna make sure that i get a sense that theyre moving forward. So actually this morning, for example, i was tasting products. So id say almost twice, thrice a month im tasting product and giving my points of view. And do you ever taste the products of some of your competitors . All the time. All the time. In fact, i was in paris the last two da last week. And when i came back, i brought with me a whole, you know, cartons of products just to have our people taste competitors products. We do that regularly. Because, you know, you cant live in a bubble. Theres Something Else i do. Might sound corny, but im gonna tell you. Anytime i visit anybodys home, within the first half hour, i make it a point to find my way into the kitchen. And im opening cupboards to see what products they have. Because, to me, its very important that if i visit somebody in their homes, anybody who invites me, could be a friend, anybody, theyve gotta have pepsi products. Well, suppose somebody has a product from a company thats based in atlanta, and you see them in their refrigerator, what do you do . I let it be known that im very unhappy. Okay. So if you ever invite me, you know what to do. I will change everything. I dont have the other products anyway, but dont worry, id have your products. Thank you, appreciate it. So youve been ceo, as i mentioned, for more than 10 years, which most ceos of fortune 500 companies are probably for five years or so, is it harder to be a ceo now than it was 10 years ago . I think when you look at the world in the last decade, the financial crisis, in fact, changed the world enormously, because youve had since then. Really, the world has not recovered from financial crisis. Youve had geopolitical upheavals all over the world. On top of that, Technology Disruption is absolutely rewriting the rules of most companies. What kind of jobs are you gonna keep in the company, how are you gonna digitize your value chain, how is ecommerce gonna impact your business. Theres some technology thats impacting every part of the company. So in this last seven years in particular, its been a real challenge to run a Large Company because youve got to be a Foreign Policy expert, youve gotta be a technology person, youve gotta be able to talk to the frontline, youve gotta be able to talk to world leaders. Ceos have had to do a lot just to be able to manage their companies and keep them going in this incredibly troubled global environment. So its been a challenge. And not long ago, an activist showed up. Mm. And the activist said, well, maybe you should spin off your fritolay business, your snack business. What was your response, and how did you happen to keep the activist pretty happy . I my job is not to keep an activist happy. My job is to make sure this company is managed for the next generation and is performing very, very well. And if the activist is happy in the process, so be it. Let me just say something, david. I am an internal activist. I own 33 times my salary in pepsico stock. My entire net worth is in this company. So if an activist or anybody in the outside had a great idea on how to improve shareholder value thats sustained, i listen to them. So i listened to the activist, i had my own personal convictions, and i have a superb board of directors. So i shared with them the strategy of a company, which i you know, im very transparent with them about. And i told them where were headed and where the activist wanted us to go. And it was very clear to the board, as it was clear to me, that that was more of a shortterm strategy. And what we were embarked on is really the longterm strategy. The board backed me, the courage of our convictions prevailed, and we are, you know, exactly where we were, before the activist came in, and performing very well. So one of the main things that you sell is pepsicola, mm. Mmhm. And theres another company, cocacola. Mmhm. If you have a blindfold test, can you tell the difference . Indra yeah, absolutely. Have you tried the two beverages . David well, im told that years ago when there were blindfold tests, more people liked pepsicola. Indra yeah. And therefore, cocacola tried to reformulate its formula, and it didnt quite work out. The secret formula for cocacola is said to be in some vault somewhere. Pepsicola formula . Yeah, we have a formula in the vault too. But i tell you, having you know, im a chemist by undergraduate degree. So im always testing competitors products. The pepsicola product was which was invented by some chemist way, way, way back, is one of the most complex, refined, amazing formulae. Lets say it is very good, yeah. But most people would say that pepsicola and maybe cocacola are not that healthy for you. Mm. So you must have heard that argument before. [laughs] yeah. And how does pepsico, under your leadership, try to make products like pepsicola healthier . What is your plan to do that . Products like pepsicola were invented many, many, many years ago when society was completely different. There was more undernutrition than there was overnutrition. And at that time, people felt that drinking products with that much sugar was all right. Society has changed. And it behooves us to change with society. So, what are we doing overall . We are launching more products with zero or very low sugar. Were taking pepsi itself and reformulating it for lower and lower sugar levels. And so the idea is to train the consumer to start accepting carbonated soft drinks with lower sugar levels. Now, the challenge is overnight you cant train the consumer to do that. Youve got to step them down piece by piece so that when we get to a level, which is, you know, like 50 or 60 calories per 8 ounce or 70 calories per 12 ounce, theyre comfortable with the product. So thats the journey were on. What about snack products . Theyve been criticized for having a lot of salt. How are you trying to make those healthier . Indra so let me just give you a good piece of news. A singleserve bag of lays has less salt than a slice of bread. Really . Yes, because its surface salt. For bread, you need it as leavening agent. In soup, you need it as a preservative. With potato chips, its a surface salt. So its actually three ingredients in a bag of lays. A little bit of salt, potatoes and hearthealthy oil. So you should eat your bag of lays with a smile on your face. My first advise. Id eat them with a smile on my face. I wonder whether i gain some weight. I wont . No, no. You exercise, you play, uh. Not enough. Whatever. You should be fine. Suppose somebody says, i dont care about being healthy. I just wanna have a great time. I wanna eat a great snack. What is your snack thats gonna make me the happiest . Oh, fritos. Fritos . Fritos. Oh, my god. Youd feel like you died and went to heaven. I have tried that, and yes, they are pretty good. [laughs] people are really the heart of pepsico. David now, you have over 200,000 employees . So how can you possibly relate to them . Do you do it through emails . How do you keep your employees informed . You have so many employees. So we do videos, we do emails, we do town halls and forums every quarter. Every time i travel, you know, we meet with the employees, and i do town halls in that town or country that i go to. Occasionally, i write very personal letters to the Employee Base as a whole. For example, my kids were going to college. I wrote a personal letter to everybody saying, im going through tremendous separation angst. Or if i felt our employees were not calling their parents often enough, id write a letter about why its important they call their parents. So whatever is on my mind on a personal basis. I want them to know me as person rather than just an executive. So im very accessible to them, and i talk to everybody from the frontline to my Senior Executives. David a number of years ago, you spoke at the Economic Club of washington, and you made a speech that i thought it really captured a lot of peoples attention. And one of the things you said was that you write letters to your Senior Officers mothers mm. To kind of give them a report card or how their children are doing. Do you still do that and what was theory behind that . So i have to take you back a few years when i first became ceo, i went back to india to visit my mother who was in india at that time. My father had passed away and my mother was there, and i stayed at a hotel because, you know, the home was a little bit more rugged and i wanted the comforts. So she told me i had to dress up and show up at home at 7 a. M. In the morning, and i wondered why. But when mom gives you instructions, you just follow it. When i got home and i sat in the living room, stream of visitors and random people started to show up. Theyd say hello to me and then go to my mom and say, you did such a good job with your daughter. You know, compliments to you, shes ceo. But not a word to me. And when i watched this interplay going on, i realized that i was a product of my upbringing. And my parents, if my father had been around, they should get the credit. Because its what they did for me and to me that allowed me to be who i was that day. And it occurred to me that i had never thanked the parents of my executives for the gift of their child to pepsico. So i came back and i started to write to my director boards and, you know, other Senior Executives narrating the story. My cultural background, what happened when i went to india, and then i wrote a personal paragraph and what their child was doing in pepsico and said, thank you for the gift of your child to our company. And it opened a floodgate of emotions. Parents just started to communicate directly with me, and its been an amazing experience because i now write to about 400 executives. You write to their parents, what do the executives say . They say, dont do that . Or im glad you told my mother how well im doing, or my father . So our executives actually get very emotional about it. Because their parents have never received such a letter. And their parents are now getting a letter, which is always a positive report card, right . I mean, im not gonna write anything else. So their parents are so delighted about receiving this letter. They tell their neighbors, their uncles and their aunts. And then the executive says, my god, this is the best thing that happened to my parents and the best thing that happened to me. So the executive feels proud, the family feels proud. And let me give you an interesting one. One of executives in europe called me and said, you wrote to my parents, thats great. But my inlaws helped me too. Can you please write to my inlaws also . So i wrote to his inlaws. And he says, you know, thank you for doing this because im ive got every part of the family happy right now. Well, suppose one of your executives gets an offer to go to another company, do you ever call the mother and say, make sure that your son doesnt go . I havent done that as yet, but when i was trying to recruit an executive, he had a competing offer. And i felt that he should come to pepsico and not accept the competing offer. So i called his mom who was in atlanta, i said, you know, mrs. Soandso, you dont know me, but this is who i am, and your son has two offers, and let me explain to you why pepsico is a Better Company for your son. So when the son went back to atlanta and he said to his mom that he had visited both companies, his mom said, youre gonna go to pepsico. He goes, what do you know about pepsico . She said, i just spoke to the ceo of pepsico. I dont care what you do, youre gonna go work for pepsico. And hes with us and hes doing brilliantly well. So have you ever written letters to the interviewers youve ever had, their mothers . No. No, no. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet, okay. Some people who might be watching this who have heard your story would say, this person has it all. Shes a woman whos become the ceo of a great company. Mm. She has a husband shes married to for more than 30 years, two happy and healthy daughters who are gainfully employed. Is it possible for anybody, certainly a woman, in our society, to have it all . And do you think youve had it all . Well, on a relative basis, yes, ive had it all, okay . On a relative basis, im very fortunate to have a wonderful husband, two great kids, a very tightknit family, an awesome job with a great team. But, you know, to get here and to stay here, i mean, lots of tradeoffs, lots of sacrifices, you know, under the water, a lot of Collateral Damage. But i think somehow ive had the strength to power through all of that. Can you have it all . Thats the big question in this definition. I think if you have the right support system. If you have an understanding spouse, if you wanna be married. And if youre willing to make all the tradeoffs that you need to make, you can have it all. But while you do all that, there will be heartache, there will be pain, there will be some Collateral Damage underneath the surface. Youve gotta live with it. When became the president of pepsi, you came home one day and your mother was there, and she asked you to get some milk mm. And well, maybe you could tell the story better than i could. Well, you know, it was way back in 2000. And i was just informed about 9 30 in the night from a phone call that i was gonna be president of the company. And so i went home because i was working on the quaker oats deal, to tell my family that i was gonna be president of pepsico. And i walked in the house and mom opens the door, she was living with me at that time, and i said, mom, i got news for you. And she said, well, before your news, go get some milk. I said, its 10 00 in the night, why should i get milk . And i noticed my husbands car was in the garage. I said, why dont you tell him to get the milk . She said, well, he came at 8, he was very tired. So i let him be. Now you go get the milk. And, you know, you never question your mom. So i went and got the milk, came back, sort of banged it on the countertop and i said, i had big news for you. I had just been appointed president of pepsico, and all that you cared about is the milk. She just looked at me and she said, what are you talking about . She said, when you walk in that door, just leave that crown in the garage because you are the wife, the daughter, the daughterinlaw, and the mother of the kids, and thats all i wanna talk about. Anything else, just leave it in the garage. So dont even try this with me anymore. So i think with mom, you dont try anything. But she must be very proud that youre the ceo of pepsi . I think she is. But if you go to her and talk about the ceo or any award that you get, shell say this is what she says to me this conversation this morning, she said, let me tell you why you got the award. Last week, i prayed four hours a day. All week. And its my prayers that got you the award, not your efforts. I said, mom, whatever it is, i just wanted you to know, i got this little award. So she keeps me very grounded, david. What is more difficult, being a woman being a ceo, or being an immigrant being a ceo, or being a combination . What do you think has caused you more difficulty, and what did you have to work . Overcome more . I dont know if its difficulty, i think being a woman, an immigrant, has had its positives and its negatives. Its had its positives because you sort of people take notice of you because youre so different. You walk in the room, people go, oh, shes a different sort of a person. Female, immigrant, tall. You know, all of these work together. Its been difficult because they go, how will she know how to run this Great American company . So i think its been both a positive and negative. But i say, on balance, more of a positive than a negative. Okay. Do you think a woman today has it easier than when you became ceo . Or do you still feel that you still have to work harder to be a woman ceo than, lets say, a man who is a ceo of an equivalentsize company . I think easier today only because there are a few more of us in positions of power. But i think from a personal perspective, its got nothing to do with women or being in this position. I have the immigrant fear. So im always afraid that if i fail, i may have to go back to something that i dont wanna go back to. And so that fear always motivates me, and i drive myself to be better and better and better at my job every day. So youre a role model, obviously, for many women. Do you see yourself as a role model . Particularly from women from india or from outside the United States. I dont have choice but to be a role model. And i feel a privilege to be the role model, whether its for women, for minorities, for indian women, for sure. Everybody looks up to me and, you know, wants to learn from me and get my advice. I you know, i cant, you know, give them all enough time. Thats the thing that makes me feel very bad because i get letters every day asking for advice, so. Whether id be a mentor to people. I cant do it all. So i try to do my best by speaking in Public Forums and try to disseminate information on a large scale. But i think. Because there are so few of us, we have to play the role of being the role model. And we have to make sure we do a good job. Because we have to set the standard for others who might follow in our footsteps. Right. And would you like your two daughters to become a ceo of a publiclytraded company, or youre not sure they would want to do that . I dont know what they wanna do because theyre very smart, wonderful kids, but ive told them that they should do whatever their heart desires. And if that means one day theyll be ceos, you know, more power to them. So one time, i think i read, mm. When your husband was saying, well, indra, youre spending all your time on pepsi, pepsi, pepsi, [laughs] and what about me . And what was the . Your response . Well, he always tells me even today, hell tell me that. Your list is pepsico, pepsico, pepsico, then the kids, then your mom. And somewhere at the bottom, i sit there. And i keep telling him, youre on the list. Just be happy youre on the list. But, you know, he knows that i love him dearly. He knows that he is my rock, that, you know, i just he is my life. But, you know, he likes to be higher up on the list. Be more pbs find more ways to explore at pbs. Org slash anywhere et women who are in engineering and tech and to learn their stories. I knew i had to work in this industry, but i dont have to race anyone, its just about my determination. My parents think the safe choice is usually the best choice and i dont think thats always the case. Dont do something that you think you should do because youre afraid. Make choices out of excitement, and passion, and interest. The future just feels very open. Road trip nation is made possible by at t through its at t aspire initiative. Through aspire, at t helps provide the education and skills training people need to succeed in school, at work, and in life. Aspire brings together at t employees, technology, nonprofits, and Community Members to help students make their biggest dreams into reality. By striving to make education more accessible, at t is using the power of its network to help build a better tomorrow