Indra Nooyi's My Life In Full

I used my nearly month long stay at Indian Oil Institute of Petroleum Management (https://iocl.com/indianoil-campus) to finish Indra Nooyi’s “My Life in Full – Work, Family and our Future” from the library.

The book covers her journey from a house built by her grandfather in 1939 in Madras (now Chennai), India to becoming the Chairperson of Pepsico (2006 -2018) and her gazing the crystal ball on what futures holds for the world at large.

Indra focuses a lot on the culture that the child learns from the family referring to her grandfather and mother repeatedly. In her childhood, her mother’s favorite expression was to advise Indra, her sister and brother to revere their father, mother and teacher as God. However the family was very progressive especially when it came to educating women and her grandfather was an even bigger supporter of the same (much more than her mother, who had her doubts about the need of the same) .

Indra had a thirteen month older sister (Chandrika) and a eight year younger brother (Nandu). ?The children were given various responsibilities for household chores from the age of 6-7 but their primary job was to study and get good grades. She did her schooling from Holy Angels Convent and was active in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities like Girls Scout, classical music & dance, debating & elocution, guitar (even part of a girl band). Subsequently she studied chemistry at the famed Madras Christian College where her sister was studying commerce. Indra continued her debating and also was part of the city’s first ever women’s cricket tournament. Her sister got admission in IIM Ahmedabad while Indra later in 1974 got admitted in IIM Calcutta. As Chandika had already cleared the path, Indra had no issues in obtaining her mother’s go-ahead. She did her summer internship at Department of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India, Bombay (now Mumbai). In the campus placement, she accepted an offer from Mettur Beardsell, a Madras based textile company owned by a UK company. Back in the 1970s, the careers meant working on the front line and Indra shares her experience of working with garment makers, sewing shops, etc first in Bombay and then Madras. Later she took up a job with J&J at Mumbai and shares her experience of launching “Stayfree” sanitary napkins.

With majority of her batch mates at IIMs and the brilliant minds from IITs of that era moving to ?USA; she applied for and got selected with scholarship for an MBA on Public Management at Yale. Indra talks about her being fortunate in finding mentors in her initial bosses and even later ones (all Men) and credits them a lot for her subsequent success. The study at Yales opened a whole new world for her – in both the schoolwork and the social experience. She also fell in love with American baseball due to its “similarity” with cricket. She was hired by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton for summer internship. Repeatedly she stresses on the importance of education and paid work for the all round progress of women. During that time she met Raj Nooyi from Mangalore, India who had just finished his master’s at University of Texas and they married soon after. She worked for and bagged a job offer from the consulting company Boston Consulting Group and worked for six years there.

She talks about the financial crunch that the new couple faced and the efforts to focus on study (Raj’s MBA) and work. She mentions in detail the flexible leave policy of BCG to take her ailing father and also of few subsequent employers and stresses that the companies have to be more flexible with sandwich generation employees who have to take care of both the young children and/ or the older parents. To reduce the kind of travelling required at BCG, she moved to Motorola. She talks in great detail about the challenges in managing your family with your jobs with no child support/ caregiver. In 1988 at the age of thirty three, she was promoted as Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning at Motorola.

Raj, her husband, placed her happiness and her carriers at the center and agreed to shift base to enable her join ABB where her Motorola’s head had moved earlier. At various points in the book, Indra talks about the advantages of multigenerational cohabitation, physically and practically. She had switched to ABB due to her previous boss and when he moved she also gradually found it difficult to continue for long. Subsequently, out of GE, Monsanto and Pepsico, she finally opted for Pepsico which was also what both her daughters were rooting for. The next 120 odd pages are about her experiences in Pepsico, rising up the ranks and trying (quite successfully) to focus the company more on energy / healthy food platform.

She mentions of a road accident of her father and the real risk of the whole family finances going haywire due to lack of medical insurance or any other support system. This continues to be a challenge for the average Indian despite ongoing efforts to increase health insurance coverage.

Repeatedly she mentions that the societies in general and corporate in particular have to find ways to make it easier for all men and women to work without their giving up the familial responsibilities. She also believes that we need to think of ways to provide comprehensive child care, eldercare solutions and paid leave for family life too.

Despite being 300 odd pages thick, the book is an easy read and anyone who has worked will identify with it. The importance of educations and the doors it open has not diminished a bit in all these years.

Disclaimer: It is not a typical rags to riches story as her paternal grandfather had retired as a district judge while her father worked in a bank; so if not high class, the family was at least above the average Indian middle class.