PepsiCo India facing HR challenge with top level resignations

Executive Director (R&D), TSR Murali, the brain behind Kurkure and Aliva, has quit PepsiCo India, a person familiar with the matter told TNN. He said Murali was one of the most important in the country’s efforts to spawn innovations in its food business.

The high profile exits come at a time when the sales of soft drinks are slowing down in the country. Several executives in charge of key functions left the company recently while a few others are waiting in the wings, said people familiar with the matter, citing the frequent restructuring in the Indian subsidiary of the New York-based food and beverage giant.

PepsiCo veterans Meghnad Mitra, who worked as senior director, planning and strategy , at the company , and Sunil Duggal, director of corporate affairs, who was responsible for liasoning with Indian government and industry bodies on behalf of the beverage major have also put in their papers recently .

A PepsiCo India spokesperson told TNN: "While senior and middle management levels do witness churn, we are pleased by the fact that we have been able to fill most of these positions internally which speaks for our talent pipeline created by our robust leadership development model and people plans. PepsiCo India has over a period of time built a very strong pipeline by giving people a mix of different critical experiences within PepsiCo India and internationally and continues to do so.”

The company faced a churn of senior and mid-level executives from both its marketing and sales division when it divested its north India bottling operations to Ravi Jaipuria's RJ Corp in November last year. The deal saw PepsiCo handing over four plants and two co-packing units across six states. Around 900 direct employees of the company were affected by the deal. Glitches dogged PepsiCo till March this year when it had to pay sizeable compensations to the workers at most of the transferred plants in a bid to make them to start production for RJ Corp.

Industry experts said PepsiCo's "Power of One" strategy, which has also come under fire from activist investors, is one of the main reasons behind employee dissatisfaction at the company .Earlier, operations were divided into two individual entities at PepsiCo--food (FritoLay India) and beverages (PepsiCo India Holdings) --with individual leaders at the helm. Then, led by PepsiCo's long-term CEO Indra Nooyi, the company merged its foods and beverages businesses in many markets with the idea that selling food and beverages as part of a single portfolio will give the company more leverage to take on rivals such as Coca-Cola, which only sells beverages.

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