'Why give a wrong picture of India?': Ex-Foreign Secretary counters Indra Nooyi's CEO remark

Former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal on Thursday pushed back against former PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi's remarks that she "would never have been CEO" in India.

"You couldn't become CEO in India? Why give a wrong picture of India?" Sibal wrote on X.

He said many women have become CEOs in India, naming Falguni Nayar, founder and CEO of Nykaa; Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, executive chairperson and founder of Biocon; Vibha Padalkar, CEO and MD of HDFC Life Insurance; Priya Nair, Managing Director and CEO of Hindustan Unilever; Prabha Narasimhan, CEO and MD of Colgate-Palmolive India; Dipali Goenka, CEO and Managing Director of Welspun India; and Radhika Gupta, CEO and MD of Edelweiss Mutual Fund.

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Sibal's remarks came after Nooyi, who led PepsiCo between 2006 and 2019, made the comments during a conversation with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Reflecting on her own journey to the top of one of America's biggest companies, Nooyi described the United States as a country that continues to offer unmatched opportunities to immigrants.

"I'm going to say boldly that even today... most people want to come here because in spite of some of the flaws we might have, we are still the greatest country in the world," she said.

She said the US environment encouraged people to become "more exciting, more aggressive, more transformational, more innovative."

Calling America a meritocratic system, Nooyi said: "This is where an immigrant could come in with nothing in her pocket and become the CEO of an iconic American red, white, and blue company. It can't happen in any other country in the world. I would never have been CEO in any other country of the world, including in India."

She added that success in the US was driven by merit rather than identity. "It's because the system is a meritocratic system. Mentors don't care whether you're male, female, ethnicity or gender. They don't care. They just want the best brains to rise to the top," she said.

Nooyi also urged younger Americans to value the opportunities available to them and said she remained "genuinely grateful" to the United States. "I came as a guest, and the US welcomed me with open arms," she said.