Two Indian Americans, Indira Nooyi, president and chief financial officer of PepsiCo Inc, and Raj Gupta, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Rohm and Haas, have been named among the 10 Most Influential Asian Americans in Business for the year 2005.

The awards were announced on April 29 by the US Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce.

Nooyi and Gupta will be presented with the award on May 5 in Washington D C during a three-day conference of the USPAACC's 20th anniversary celebrations.

Nooyi is one of the most high-profile Indian Americans in the corporate world. In 2001, Fortune magazine put her in the 10th spot among the 50 most powerful women in business, up 33 places from her rank the previous year.

Visiting India last month, she announced Pepsi will pump in up to $500 million in the country over the next few years, taking the company's investment in India to over $1 billion.

Gupta, an 1967 Indian Institute of Technology graduate in mechanical engineering, heads the $7 billion Rohm and Haas, which specialises in making cutting-edge specialty chemicals that are used in products as diverse as paint and computers.

The others who figure in the list are heavyweights like Jeong Kim, president of Bell Labs & Lucent Technologies, John Chen, president and CEO of Sybase, Inc., Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief director of Yahoo! Inc and Christine Poon, Vice-Chairman of Johnson & Johnson, among others.

In a statement, Susan Au Allen, USPAACC National President and CEO, said, "These inspiring, astonishingly talented and world-class Asian Americans come as varied as the business endeavour is in our country.... all have made an indelible mark in the industry in which they work, and all exemplify the best of Asian America."

The Washington DC-based USPAACC is the nation's leading pan Asian American business organisation that seeks to bring contract and procurement opportunities to the table with corporate America, the federal government, and the minority business community.