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Ms Indra Nooyi, President and CFO, PepsiCo. - Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , March 31

PESPSICO would ideally like its foods classified under the `Good for you' category to contribute half of its sales and those in the other categories — `Fun for you' and `Better for you' — together the other half.

Making this point in an interaction with journalists of The Hindu group here on Thursday, Ms Indra Nooyi, President, Chief Financial Officer and a member of the board of directors of PepsiCo, said at present `Good for you' and `Better for you' foods accounted for 35 per cent and `Fun for you' the remaining 65 per cent.

"Our goal as a company is to have a 50:50 mix of Good for you, Fun for you and Better for you," she said.

The `Fun for you' category included products that were indulgent such as Pepsi or Lays; Better for you, where the company took a perceived negative out of a product and introduced a new product such as Diet Pepsi; and, Good for you included the Tropicana brand of juices.

Ms Nooyi pointed out that whereas the number of servings of products in the US had been going up, "the calories we sell" had been going down. Companies such as PepsiCo might offer a range of products to cater to different tastes.

Ms Nooyi said ownership of lifestyle was being transferred from individuals to corporations. "Eat what you want and drink what you want," she said, and pointed out that in the US, consumers were asserting that they be allowed to control their eating habits.

During the hour-long interaction, Ms Nooyi, who spent the earlier part of her life in "Madras," as she prefers to call it, and had her basic education here, dealt with a number of topics ranging from PepsiCo globally to the Indian operations, specifically the controversy raised about the presence of pesticides in soft drinks.

"All of us at PepsiCo are very proud of the company that we work for," she said and asserted that there was not a product that it sold in India that did not meet global standards on safety and hygiene.

As far as PepsiCo was concerned, she sought to dispel what she described as the myth of MNCs (multinational companies) giving India a raw deal and reiterated that the products sold by it in India were of the highest standards.

Different PepsiCo products from various markets were tested in a laboratory in Belgium and those from India were equal to others in all aspects of safety and hygiene, she said.

Referring to the Indian market, Ms Nooyi said it was fifth on PepsiCo's global turnover with China being in the fourth place.

She said that PepsiCo had not just brought in foreign direct investment but was also a good corporate citizen in all the States it operated in. For instance, in Punjab, the company worked with farmers, helped them improve their yield and make their operations more efficient.

Twenty-two farmers from Punjab had gone to Florida in the US to see how oranges were grown. Pepsi's aim, she said, was to make Punjab a model for citrus fruits.

There were a couple of other local level initiatives such as seaweed cultivation in Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu. PepsiCo India officials explained that the company took up cultivation of seaweed, which was used as a food grade gel and transferred this to self-help groups.

Almost 80 per cent of those involved in this were women. A new usage for this seaweed had also been found. PepsiCo guaranteed to buy back the seaweed cultivated here.

On the water used by the soft drinks industry, PepsiCo India officials explained that the company would create a positive water balance-sheet — that is, if it consumed 100 litres of water, it would put back 100 litres of water. It hoped to accomplish this in three years through a number of initiatives such as rainwater and roof-water harvesting in its own premises; community level measures such as reinforcing ponds and constructing check dams; and working with farmers to help them optimise their use of water.

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