‘Let us not create a society where we push out some of the best talent artificially’

Q&A begins:

Your journey and your life have been multifaceted and well rounded. Let’s start with your current focus on affordable childcare. Why is that so important?

I have had an excellent stint in corporate America and I want to do something to give back to society. One of the big purpose planks I am now focusing on is how do we enable young family builders to have children, and yet engage in paid work. This is an important issue as women, who were sort of a forgotten group for many, many decades, now go to college in large numbers; they are studying hard; they want economic freedom; they are getting the top grades and they are incredibly smart and hungry. For any country, company or state to move ahead, you want the best and brightest from society.
If you want the best talent to engage in paid work, and if you want them to have a family life as well, you have to think about providing the necessary support mechanisms. The most important of these support mechanism is how do you make sure affordable childcare is available to them so that both husband and wife can engage in paid work. To me, quality, affordable childcare is still elusive.

What would your advice be on an official policy on maternity leave in India?

India today has a wonderful demographic dividend. But we have to make sure we keep that going. Families must succeed and stay together. So we have to think carefully about maternity as well as paternity care. We also need someone for maternity care after the very early stages of a child’s birth.

What would be your advice to Indian SMEs who employ small teams? How do you advise them to have a paid maternity / paternity leave policy and keep the door open for them to come back?

That’s a very important question as we kept talking about big companies only. It’s a real challenge for smaller companies. I would suggest a few things: one, just like social security in the US, some sort of a maternity leave fund has to be created at the government level. Second, we can hire workforce from the temp organisations who has trained people at their disposal and can help fill in the void when your regular employee has gone for maternity or paternity leave or any other emergency leave.

We keep hearing about work-life balance. But is this restricted to large, successful companies in developed economies? In many parts of the world, people are willing to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day? Does that kind of tip the scales? Does that concern you?

Let me throw some numbers from the US. And I think some of them apply to India in a different way. I read somewhere that 70% of high school valedictorians are women in the US; 70% of women are getting more college degrees than men in the US; women are really doing well in professional schools – 47% of students in MIT are women etc.
Now, if we say that these super-smart, hungry people should not get time off when they have kids, we will in effect keep them away from the job market. Let us not create a society where artificially we push out some of the best talent, because we cannot do something as simple as providing an infrastructure.

I don’t know when the last time you travelled to rural India was, but there’s a lot of progress on that front.

I am very optimistic about India and about the focus on equality. We have to celebrate the progress. But there is a cup-half-empty syndrome as well through the perspective of women and how do we make things better for them.

So, you’re not advocating joint family structures. Are you saying that we have to figure out a new structure?

No, I think it’s a family by family decision. I lived in a joint family structure very often and it worked well. But my mother stayed at home because she was not allowed to study and I have said in my book, had she been allowed to study, she would have really conquered the world. When I was sort of evolving with my kids, I had help from my mother, my in laws, everybody helped us. But I don’t know what the future is.

What about women entrepreneurs? Mohan Bhagwat made a very interesting speech recently about how entrepreneurship has to get us the next level of jobs. Your views on that.

Men today hold all the positions of power and post – whether it’s venture capital funding or other positions of power. Many women have enormous sets of ideas, but when they go for funding, men do not take them seriously. Very often these women are asked who are the men in her team. This doesn’t make sense – the mindset of men must change. They should evaluate the idea, not the gender behind it. Evaluate the viability, the success, the disruptive nature of the idea, and how it can create enormous profits for us.

Two things have to happen. Venture capital funding has to be more equitable. Even in Silicon Valley, only 2.33% of venture funding goes to female founders. There has got to be a mass education of men on these aspects.

The tech sector is seeing mass layoffs. What would your advice be to managements and to employees who are obviously jittery these days?

It is the ebb and flow. I have been in American business for almost 40 years. And we’ve always had cycles where there is lot of hiring, productivity changes, layoffs, again, lot of hiring. It’s a cyclical thing. I would say anybody who is working, should put money away for a rainy day because if you don’t have a clear proposition and a clear contribution to the company, all the excess will be whittled down,. Everybody’s is unduly focused on the tech layoffs.

Is the recession concern being overblown?

We have record low unemployment that we haven’t had in 70 years. But the country is doing well. In my own state of Connecticut, there are 100,000 job openings of all kinds. Sure, some tech companies have laid off and they needed to. They overbuilt and they over hired, and now are whittling down to what they need. But that’s a small portion of the American economy, the rest of the country is doing great. The real issue is, we have to think about everybody leaning in to contribute to the economy.

We keep hearing about India as the only bright spot in the world. Do you think that’s not the case and there are many bright spots?

India is an enormously bright spot because it is outside of the geopolitical issues… and its population. As global supply chains shift from one large country to another, people, especially in the western world, are seeking countries with lots of population, skills, and infrastructure to be able to fill the void

If India can get its investment in infrastructure right – and I see all the things you’re doing, which is great – it could be unbeatable in the next decade or two. India today is being viewed as the most strategic partner for the US bar none.

Do you think the economic world order is changing, or do you see that it’s just a kind of ebb and flow?

The US has been the power for all this time. And it’s been good because it’s a democracy. It’s great to have a democratic country in power. Now all of a sudden, you have got challenges to the US from different political systems. So, it created national tension, which is to be expected. The real question for the world is, who would you rather have as a power? Would you rather have a democratic capitalistic system or a more centrally managed system moving to capitalism as an equal power? What would we like? It is not for any country to decide if somebody else is going to be a power or not. It is a question of how do you play an
unlevel playing field? And today, I am not sure it’s a level playing field. But to be honest, I am not a politician or an economist, I can only comment from the view of a corporate business leader.

The country was and is a big part of many global brands’ identity. Do you think that is changing and that the country now isn’t something that they want to sell to the consumer as much as the product and the brand?

I think if you look at every brand, whether it’s Nike or Pepsi, Apple or any US brand, they are all viewed as a bit of Americana, the innovation of America, the lifestyle of America, the joy of America, the culture of America, they all represent that. The point is, you cannot make business only on that narrow approach. So, most companies try to build shoulders. So, we say, we’re going to have our American products that form the core, then we’re going to build a set of local products that support the main products. So, we do that in every country, we have a global brands, and we have local brands.

Do you think it is getting more complicated to run a multinational company now? For example, a lot of the Apple phones are manufactured in China or almost all the parts of a car are coming from somewhere else.

The world is no longer flat, there are nation-state boundaries going up. It’s not just the assembly, it’s the entire component ecosystem they build to feed into the assembling. To replicate that is not going to be easy. I mean, for India to replicate a Foxconn is going to be very difficult and will take a lot of time. China is going to be part of the global supply chain. If we think we can
wean ourselves off that in two or three years, let’s think again.

Is it more political now than it ever was? Is it more complicated now to be to be managing these things than it ever was?

Most certainly, every company now has to have a foreign policy. Every company is now part of the foreign policy priorities of the country in which it’s domiciled.

Do you think that HR policy also needs a sense of localisation, when, they are working outside of their core country?

Most certainly, I think every company has a core HR policy, which is based on the value statement. And then they tailor it to various countries. That’s part of every HR mandate. In PepsiCo, we believed in gender equality. But in those days, you couldn’t go to Saudi and say, men and women have to work together. Because the Saudi laws did not allow it. So, we had manufacturing plants were, the women worked on one side of the factory and men worked on the other side. And there was a wall between the two, and there was an opening and the product would come through. In our offices, men and women worked separately. Now, things are changing.

What are your thoughts on sustainable way of doing business? How much did you think about this when you were at Pepsi? And how much do you think that’s something that companies need to think about?

That was the part of the genesis of performance with purpose at PepsiCo, because to me, the environmental plank was very important. I grew up in Chennai, which is water distressed. And I thought that using two and a half liters of water to make these beverages was not okay. So I had reduced the water footprint because I said there are too many water distressed areas. Our team was successful in changing the water use profile.

Sustainable ways of doing business has to be a way of life. You know, in Connecticut, in many parts of the United States, now, you have to pay for a plastic bag or paper bag in a grocery store.

Consumer behaviour has to change. There are ways we can handle waste provided consumers get together and say we are going to change our behaviour. If every family said, I want to cut down the amount of waste from my home by 20% in the next three months, and another 20% in the next three months and keep doing that, I think you will have a fantastic change in behaviour.

You see a lot of FMCG products being pushed that are easy and cheap to distribute. And most of them are just really bad for health.

You are raising a question that bothers me a lot. And, you know, I tend to go back to my classification of fun for you, better for you and good for you. Interestingly, you can make your product better for you by making it zero calorie; you can have a zero calorie food item. The
problem is that most of these products have shorter shelf life, so they have to be refrigerated and they have to have very efficient distribution systems. India does not have efficient distribution systems, because your cold chains are not that efficient. And it takes too long for a product to come from the farm to the individual.

Your proudest moment?

Having my kids.

One regret during your PepsiCo stint

There was a project called Pepsi Refresh that I had to stop prematurely because of unfair criticism. I still regret that I stopped it. It was just at the height of the financial crisis.

One thing about India that you cherish the most.

Its values, its family values, everything about it, how it’s changed with time. To me, the importance of family is something I always carry with me all the time.

The one thing about India that you think needs reform.

I would say India is making progress towards a more agile, efficient, streamlined government. I think India is going to be unbeatable when it reaches its goal of having a fully digital, fully streamlined government.

One thing about America that you cherish the most.

Its innovative spirit, entrepreneurship; can-do attitude with a must do sense of responsibility. I just love everything about it.

One thing where America that needs reform.

The political divisions that we have today can be bridged. So I am very optimistic.

Test cricket, T-20 or ODI?

T-20.

Any one Indian woman business leader you admire

Kiran Majumdar Shaw. What she’s doing in the whole area of biotechnology, how fearless she speaks her mind and how humble she is. She is just an extraordinary individual.

The first word that comes to your mind when I say arranged marriage.
Just make sure that women have a say.

The one thing you admire about Coca Cola.

The history of the brand.

From the entire PepsiCo portfolio, what’s your favourite product?

What I eat the most is Lay’s chips.

The last time you put your foot down with your daughters.

I have two daughters and they are very, very different. The last time I put my foot down was about my first daughter, who is getting married. I put my foot down and something she wanted to do at the wedding. I said I am not going to participate in that. My little one, I never have to put my foot down because she never makes me to… not yet.

One lesson your daughters have taught you?

Don’t interrupt when they’re talking. Let them finish what they have to say. We have a pretty good illness. Many of us think we know all the answers and we interrupt our children too much.

Is there any one beverage from India that you think has the potential to be a global product?

I still love the Indian Badam kheer. If only it did not have as much sugar. And so, as a good for you product it could have global appeal if it was not so wonderfully sugary and fatty. So, we have to think about how to make it. The other one that I love, but I don’t know if it has global appeal is lassi. I think that is what Amul did. The chach was great.

Any snack from India that can have a global appeal.

I think even the namkeens Today, many of them are beginning to have global appeal. I think we put too much chilly into it. If we made them a little bit more palatable to the western palate, they could work.