Indra Nooyi

“I asked my parents for permission to study in America and they were so sure that I wouldn't get in and get a scholarship that they encouraged me to try. So I applied to Yale and got an excellent scholarship. I then worked for the Boston Consulting Group for six and half years.”

“I play the guitar when I want to relax. But to play the guitar, you cut the nails. So one day, I'll cut the nails off.”

“India is a country with huge potential, and it remains an attractive high priority market for PepsiCo. We believe we have only scratched the surface of long term growth opportunities that exist for PepsiCo and our partners.”

“My guilty pleasures are the websites where you can look at the fashions and see how different outfits will look. You can even take a picture of yourself and download it and play with the fashions! I love playing with these websites to see what I can learn.”

“Food service is a growth area for PepsiCo.”

“As a CEO of a large company, clearly we need policies in the U.S. government that are pro-business, because at the end of the day, we all work within the framework of a country's policies.”

“Is Naked Juice a beverage, or is it a snack? I think we can liquefy snacks or snackify liquids.”

“When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response.”

“I think innovation as a discipline needs to go back and get rethought and revived. There are so many models to talk about innovation, there are so many typologies of innovation, and you have to find a good innovation metric that truly captures the innovation performance of a company.”

“My father was an absolutely wonderful human being. From him I learned to always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent.”

“When I came to America in 1978, I was a huge sports fan - the problem was, my sport was cricket. Shockingly enough, no one wanted to talk cricket with me!”

“There will never be a replacement for that ongoing physical contact. But I don't think blogging is meant to replace the face-to-face of friendships and meetings. Blogging is a way to keep in touch with a larger group of people on an ongoing basis, in a more efficient way.”

“The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don't improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant.”

“When I was a kid, I would come home from school, throw my bag, go out to play. My daughter comes home from school, throws her bag, goes to play, but sitting in front of the computer because their definition of play has changed. They don't go out to play. They play on the computer with their friends.”

“I hear my own daughters talking about big companies polluting the environment, and then I realise they are talking about companies of which one I am running. But when I tell them to read the things we are doing, then they realise we are doing good things. But millennials are really a great lot.”