Indra Nooyi (A Biography)

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"When I first came to the US I was dirt poor. At Yale I worked at the reception counter from midnight to 5 am to make money. When you don’t even have clothes for job interviews, all of a sudden life gives you a wake up call and you realize you have got to work extremely hard to make it happen for you."

Indra Nooyi’s meteoric rise and success has been charted by every newspaper and business journal in the world but how many of us know the person behind the image? The Secret of Success: The Story of Indra Nooyi gives us a rare insight into Nooyi's life, her childhood, the choices she made, the struggles she faced and the lessons she learnt on her way to the top. The accolades came later and there were many. In 2007 she was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the President of India. In 2007 and 2008, Time magazine listed her among the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2008, Forbes named her the third-most powerful woman in business while Fortune, in 2009 and 2010 put her on top of their list. Again Forbes, in 2010, ranked her the sixth most powerful woman in the world as well as listed her, along with Mother Teresa, Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton, among the thirty most inspiring women in the world.

How did Nooyi do it? What kept her going? How did she manage "to sustain home and hearth through the challenges she faced while running the second-largest food and beverage business in the world? Amazingly, she conveys through her life and her achievements that the highest of accomplishments is possible without sacrificing who and what you are. Though Nooyi became an American citizen in 1988, India, Indian values, her home and family in Chennai remain at the core of this corporate leader's heart. Read about this and more in this intimate and revealing biography of one of the world’s most unusual women.

On 28 October, 1955, newspapers reported the news of an Icelandic author, Haldor Kiljan Laxness, winning the Nobel Prize for literature. He had written his first novel at the age of seventeen. That same day, in the United States of America, a couple named William and Mary had just had a son, William H. Gates, better known today as Bill Gates. And across the world, the University of Madras in India was celebrating its centenary. This day of celebrations and recognitions was an apt birthday for a girl who would only add to its glory. Born into the Krishnamurthy family in 1955, the little girl was named Indra-a prophetic name, the name of the Hindu King of gods, the bearer of lightening, a colourful king whose royal title did not stand in the way of him occasionally landing in soups of varying depths.

What does it take to make Indra Nooyi? While her parents would perhaps say the answer is the right genes, Ms Nooyi herself in an address at her alma mater, I[M Calcutta, replied, "Candidness, confidence, boundless energy, unending hope and an energizing vision encapsulated in a compassionate world view." Singer, mother, wife, daughter, but best known for being CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi gives new meaning to the term ‘first among equals’.