Nooyi is only the 12th woman to head a Fortune 500 company, and the only Indian-American woman to make the cut. She is also only the fourth member of the community -- after Raj Gupta, CEO of Rohm and Haas, Ramani Iyer, chairman and CEO of Hartford Financial Services Group, and Surya Mohapatra, who heads Quest Diagnostics -- to head a Fortune 500 company.
That is hardly the end of her meteoric rise. January 2007, the board of directors of Pepsi met again, and announced Nooyi had been elected chairman of the board, effective May 1, becoming the fifth chairman and CEO, and the first woman to hold those positions in Pepsi's 42-year-old history. All of this, in just a little over a decade.
It prompted Gupta to remark that her achievements were not only 'a phenomenal story', but a 'double-whammy', because 'she is not just Indian, but a woman -- and there are two minority sectors for you.' Throughout her career, Nooyi has had to put in more than 100 percent, as she admitted to Forbes in 2005, when the magazine ranked her the 28th most powerful woman in corporate America: 'Being a woman, being foreign-born, you have got to be smarter than anyone else.'
Gupta also acknowledged that Nooyi had left her Indian-American counterparts like him, Iyer and Mohapatra in awe because when one considered all the facts - 'the size of the company, the fact that it's a consumer product company, and also that it has the largest market-cap' -- it was a pretty phenomenal accomplishment. PepsiCo Inc is now ranked 61st on the Fortune 500 but, according to the research organization Catalyst, Nooyi ranks Number 2 among the top 10 female CEOs of the biggest Fortune 500 American companies, second only to Patricia A Woertz, chief of Archer Daniels Midland Company, number 56 on the list.
At Pepsi, Nooyi saw the future beyond the fizz. She was the primary architect of Pepsi's restructuring and transformation, including the merger with Quaker Oats and the acquisition of Tropicana, and was instrumental in pushing for the addition of some of the world's strongest health and wellness brands to the company portfolio. Her stellar reputation as the company's chief strategist for over a decade had her predecessor as CEO and now as chairman Steven Reinemund, who retires in May, declare, 'PepsiCo is in extraordinarily gifted and capable hands.'
Photograph: Paresh Gandhi
Also see: Nooyi being groomed for top Pepsi post
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