A multinational CEO's press meet leaves a refreshingly different flavour

24 December 2007

Chennai: The $35-billion turnover PepsiCo chairman and CEO Indra K Nooyi's press conference in a nondescript Pammal municipality in Chennai was positively different.

In recent times, global chiefs of telecom, automobile and other companies have met the Chennai press, many of them smaller than PepsiCo. And though they head companies smaller than PepsiCo, the Chennai media has seen them display a haughty demeanour.

There have been instances where some visitors have actually said that while they would not answer any media questions in Chennai, they would like to pose for photographs!

Often they have abruptly terminated press conferences as soon as they found questions leaving them hot under the collar. Pleasantly, nothing of the kind happened at Nooyi's media meet. Perhaps her media meet is also akin to the corporate slogan `performance with purpose.'

Performance with purpose
She gave a good introductory speech where she spoke about the responsibility of corporates to society, citing Bhagavad Gita and the conflict between two moral positions of Lord Krishna and Arjuna.

Krishna's stand, she recounted to the Chennai press, was do your duty regardless of the outcome, while Arjuna argued that the outcome should be beneficial.