Not even many in the senior tiers of PepsiCo Inc. know of a quiet coup the Indian unit of the foods and beverages giant scored in December. At a meeting of the company's top executives at Purchase, New York, before they headed out for Christmas holidays, Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo, placed a bright-coloured pack of tangy baked crackers on the table.
The brand, Aliva, had been developed nearly 12,000 km away at Gurgaon and was crackling in the Indian snacks marketplace, since a summer launch, selling at Rs 12 a pack. "Why can't we do an Aliva, at a similar price, in our other top markets," Nooyi, 54, asked her key lieutenants of the latest product in PepsiCo's fast-growing global foods portfolio. India was the lead market in the company's sprawl for a product of the Aliva kind and the first from a new baked-snack business unit formed early in 2009.
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