The End of An Era: Indra Nooyi Steps Down As PepsiCo CEO

After her 12 year-long reign, Indra Nooyi will step down as CEO of food and beverage giant PepsiCo. Nooyi will make way for company veteran Ramon Laguarta, whose promotion to President last year, made him a strong candidate to take over. However, Nooyi will continue to serve as chairman till early 2019.

Laguarta’s tenure as President saw him take charge of global operations, corporate strategy, public policy and government affairs. He was also the CEO for the Europe Sub-Saharan Africa division. Speaking about his upcoming new responsibilities, Nooyi tweeted, “ Ramon Laguarta is exactly the right person to help build on PepsiCo’s strong position and success. He has been a critical partner and friend and I am positive that he will take PepsiCo to new and greater heights in the years to come”.

Nooyi’s departure comes in light of a decline in the global soda market, owing to a general decline in soda consumption that has affected PepsiCo’s North American beverage unit. According to reports, soda consumption has reached an all-time low in nearly 30 years. However, the company reached a $63.5 million mark in revenue last year, with a 78% increase in share price. She managed to re-shape Pepsi’s sales and marketing strategies, and even introduced healthier drinks to the Pepsi family, like juices and teas.

Born and raised in Madras, Nooyi earned her Bachelor’s degree in Physics, Maths and Chemistry from Madras Christian College, followed by an MBA from IIM Calcutta. She then began her career at Johnson & Johnson as a product manager. She earned her Masters’ Degree in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management in 1980, and joined Boston Consulting Group upon graduating.

Her 12 year-long stint at PepsiCo began in 1994, and was named CFO in 2001, rising to CEO in 2006. Nooyi spearheaded a complete restructuring of the brand, and reclassified PepsiCo’s products into three categories: “fun for you”, potato chips and regular soda, “better for you”, diet or low-fat versions of snacks and sodas, and “good for you”, items such as oatmeal). When she started as CFO, the company’s profit rose from $2.7 billion to $6.7 billion.

Nooyi also serves on the boards of the International Cricket Council and several non-profit organizations, including the US-India Business Council, the Consumer Goods Forum, Catalyst, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, the World Economic Forum and the Asia Society.

In a radio interview, she also stated her intentions to curate a line of snacks specifically for women, designed and packaged according to women’s preferences, based on behavioural differences in the way men and women consume snacks.

Nooyi was also featured on renowned lists such as Wall Street’s 50 women to watch out for, Time’s Most Influential People, and Forbes’ Most Powerful Women in the World. In 2013, she was awarded by then Indian President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

About her plans post stepping down, Nooyi said, “I think people like me, after we leave privileged CEO jobs, I don’t think we can go silent. We have to keep fighting the good fight to develop women, to mentor them, to support them, so that we can get more highly qualified women, and there’s plenty of them – into the boardroom, into C suites and into the ultimate CEO job. My job is in fact just beginning once I leave PepsiCo because I can do things now that I was constrained to do when I was CEO of the company.”