When Indian PM and US Prez claimed Nooyi is one of theirs

Washington, September 26

Indian-American Indra Nooyi, former chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo, still vividly remembers a 2009 meeting with the then US President Barack Obama and former PM Manmohan Singh during which both claimed: “She is one of us.”

“I belong in both worlds,” Chennai-born Nooyi, 65, writes in her new memoir “My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future”, recollecting the memorable events of November 2009 when Obama had hosted Singh for his first state dinner.

In the memoir, set to hit the bookstores next Tuesday, Nooyi describes the events that shaped her life from childhood to her becoming Pepsico CEO, a position from which she retired in 2018.

“One Tuesday in November 2009, after hours of meetings in Washington DC with two dozen top US and Indian business executives, I found myself standing between the US President and the PM of India,” she writes in the introduction of the memoir. — PTI